Three Imaginary Girls - Anticon

Recommended Show: Baths at Chop Suey {3/1}

Imaginary Steve — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 16:35:58 +0000

When computers acquire the ability to experience emotions, they just might come to consider Will Wiesenfeld a kindred spirit. If you're a member of the ever-decreasing choir of those who find electronic music to be inherently cold and sterile, Baths offer up a soothing remedy. The latest moniker of the LA-based Wiesenfeld (formerly of [Post Foetus]), Baths' debut Cerulean is wrapped in more warmth than the entire catalogues of most so-called traditional performers. Fewer anywhere couple stellar beat-making with such potent, emotive songwriting chops. Baths aim to please visually as well, proven by the shockingly beautiful video for "Lovely Bloodflow."

Though he has yet to be name-checked in any recent Radiohead singles (a la Flying Lotus), the future is undeniably bright for the 21-year-old prodigy. Whether you label it hip-hop, glitch, glo-fi or something altogether different, Baths succeed in moving both body AND mind. And whether you're dealing with guitars or samplers, isn't that all any of us really need? Head to Chop Suey on Tuesday, 3/1 to see for yourself.

Baths, Braids, Gobble Gobble
Tuesday, 3/1 @ Chop Suey
All Ages (Bar w/ ID)
$10 adv/$12 dos/Doors @ 8pm

WHY? and Themselves team up for exclusive MP3 just before dropping new LPs

Chris Estey — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 15:46:26 +0000

WHY? is releasing their fourth album Eskimo Snow on September 20th -- with a batch of creatively-overloaded tracks, just as they "roll up" a joint (ha!) with Themselves, a little national love to our Northern neighbors, "Canada" (right click here).

Here's the information on the collaboration: Both groups go back to seminal language and noise UG lords cLOUDDEAD, and has all members of both groups on the track, with vocals from son of book editor and rabbi Yoni Wolf (the main vision of WHY?) and Doseone from Themselves. The latter is dropping CrownsDown after making impressions with its mix tape shenanigans earlier this year.

Resurgam

Imaginary Shrie — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 16:06:55 +0000

7.2

http://www.amazon.com/Resurgam-Alias/dp/B001BGRZ28

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I've always enjoyed Alias' style: tripping beats punctuated with smart percussion taps and a meandering landscape-infused feel that brings the music out of the player and into the world. There are always less words than beats and the music moves progressively, swaying in and out of tracks without song-defining lines. Resurgam is more of the wonderful same, a swinging sound scape both danceable and meditative. His first solo instrumental album in five years, Alias returns to the solid brick foundation of his skill, crafting smoothelectro and acoustic beats so good he doesn't need any lyrics.

Resurgam lifts off with cheerleader chants, spelling "A - L - I - A - S" and breaking it down hard into a soft lulling sweep then whipping right back up into a beat-induced frenzy. "I Heart Drum Machines" is true to style, with melodic falling rain and a symphonic swell only to unfurl into rapid choppy drums and lightly executed dreamy xylophone. This album is full of depth, both hard and soft in texture. Each track starts at one end of the spectrum and then transmogrifies into it's antithesis.

The third track, "Well Water Black", features fellow Anticon labelmate Why? singer Yoni Wolf, giving it the falsetto treatment. The telltale Anticon flavor is there on this album, but Alias makes it all his own with stellar beat-boxing, Casio stylings and a cool unassuming hip hop aesthetic that is much more understated than most of Anticon's offerings.

"M.G. Jack" is completely reminiscent of the awesome Boards of Canada, coming close to ripping off a particular beat sequence they're so fond of using. Alias' version is fuller and more tinny in tone with interlacing percussion patterns with an electric organ (synth?) gracefully anchoring it all down. The whole album is a cavalcade of layered percussion noise, vocal "oohs" and impeccably placed musical static. It all comes together in a neater package than it seems, an electronic instrumental base peppered with glitch pops and laser quick hooks.

Resurgam isn't bombastic or fodder for a dance club remix. It's a dark 80's hip hop influenced rendesvouz with pulsating percussion loops and a shuffling pace. It's not the album to get the party started but it's captivating at times, appropriately cerebral andunabrasive. It could use a fire poker to the ass at times, but in these days of overdone vocal effects and rave-like crescendos, Alias' Resurgam is a welcome respite from that mayhem.

Alias returns to the solid brick foundation of his skill, crafting smoothelectro and acoustic beats so good he doesn't need any lyrics.

Pretty Swell Explode

Imaginary Shrie — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 15:52:51 +0000

7.9

http://www.amazon.com/Pretty-Swell-Explode-Odd-Nosdam/dp/B0017IKQQW

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David Madson, aka Odd Nosdam, honed his beatsmithing skills alongside some of the best underground hip-hopsters in the biz: Alias, Doseone, Jel, Why?, Sole and the rest of the Anticon crew. After three studio albums, Odd drops Pretty Swell Explode, a remixes/rarities/b-sides compilation that really showcases his ability to blend field recordings, live instrumentation and sampling into an atmospheric head-spin of an album.

It's hard to characterize the sounds on Pretty Swell Explode. It listens like background music but snatches back your averted attention just in the nick of time with sweeping gauzy textures. The first track is just that, a mesmerizing wash of sound overlaying the muted beauty of Jessica Bailiff's vocals and structured with popping drum machine beats. Odd collaborates with the majority of Anticon artists on this release and remixes some killer tracks from Black Moth Super Rainbow and ambient electro greats Boards of Canada. While a certain disjointed and inconsistent feel is present, Pretty Swell Explode is one semi-fluid piece, congealed in gruff fuzz and underwater lyricists.

Pretty Swell Explode isn't an album of tracks. Instead it moves and flows seamlessly, "Untitled Three" expanding into a black-stringed version of Serena-Maneesh's "Don't Come Down Here" and then gracefully fading into the pre-silence of the haunting "Freshman Thesis", a re-worked track from labelmates Thee More Shallows. "Freshman Thesis" sounds like the Notwist run through a cheese grater and then slathered with honey. Crisp lead vocals by Thee More Shallows frontman Yoni Wolf are accentuated by a muddled background of Why? vocal drops, sounding like a distorted track of cell phone interference.

Very lo-fi sounding, Pretty Swell Explode exists as a "feeling" album... one that you sense and appreciate from a place somewhere outside of its general consciousness. Understated breaks slip in between airy reverb and become jumbled into static, as in "Four Thousand Style". Male/female duo Alias & Tarsier's "Ligaya" is revamped in a dense dub rhythm, bouncing slowly alongside Tarsier's ethereal voice cooing in echo. And with equal beauty, but a different approach, Odd recreates Black Moth Super Rainbow's "Forever Heavy" into a strungout and sensual dirge, reminiscent of the original but with its own stand-alone aesthetic.

Odd's sonic art is about the sum of the parts, the filtered-through patterns and the upswing of seminal beats. Pretty Swell Explode is the soundtrack to this chilly autumn's swirling and vibrant leaves, it's the album that you wish was on constant repeat so you could live inside its rotating planet of sound. You don't remember the hooks while you're trying to sleep, and if pressed you probably wouldn't recommend this album to the casual music lover, but Pretty Swell Explode is its own kind of musical gem, rough and inconspicuously pleasing.

You don't remember the hooks while you're trying to sleep, and if pressed you probably wouldn't recommend this album to the casual music lover, but Pretty Swell Explode is its own kind of musical gem, rough and inconspicuously pleasing.

Alopecia

Erik Gonzalez — Wed, 28 May 2008 05:03:12 +0000

8.2

http://www.amazon.com/Alopecia-Why/dp/B0011V7OQ0/wwwthreeimagi-20/

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I have a soft spot for bands from Oakland. The city gets a bad rap, mostly because it is overshadowed by the capitol of smug, San Francisco. However, given a choice, I'd take Oakland on my side any day of the week, even with its Mad Max-style multipurpose stadium, questionable neighborhood and tendency to elect Jerry Brown mayor. The city's musical vanguard are some of the best of what music has to offer: Xiu Xiu, the Coup, various Hyphy types and now we can add Why? to that list.

Alopecia kind of snuck up on me. Sure, I was getting inundated by promotional material about the band. Heck, I think at one point I think I received 10 emails in a week from the promo company. I have to admit that all this self-created hype actually turned me off from even wanting to listen to the album. However, as it is with good music, it has a way on infiltrating your headspace. Why? tracks would pop up at random on my iPod and I would have to inquire who was producing such pleasant noises (and a couple times, wondering what the hell this shit was). And so, after the initial disgust with the attempts to jam the 5” disc of plastic down my gullet, I finally sat down with Why? for some quality one-on-one time ... it was well worth the wait.

Why? might be best described as a fusion of Islands/Unicorns, MC 900ft Jesus, Grand Buffet, Beck and Busdriver (on downers). They are usually described as “indie hip-hop” or “avantcore” or “intelligent urban” or “whatever catchall we feel like because we have no idea how to classify the band.” So, yeah, they're a mismash. All I know is that they're fun, they're flippant (well, “rapper” Yoni Wolf at least seems to be) and they know how to write a pop song (whether they like it or not). The songs are laid-back stream-of-consciousness jams (“Good Friday”), rollicking dirges (“The Vowels Pt. 2”), synth-pop melodies (“These Few Presidents”), modern rock kaleidoscopes (“Song of the Sad Assassin”), modern rock radio hits (“Fatalist Palmistry”), power ballad (“Simeon's Dilemma”) and that only gets at half of the songs. Maybe they take some misteps with the songs just feel like they are dragged out of storage (“Gnashville,” “Brook & Waxing”), but these misses are far outweighed by the hits.

On one hand, Alopecia is dense and complex. On the other hand, it is about as straightforward as you can get. This is music for slackers written by slackers, sucking their influences out of the cracks in the TV and radio. It might have taken me a while to notice Why? (thank you very much so-called “promoters”), but after letting my guard down, they've shown me yet again the hidden gems of the other city by the Bay.

All I know is that they're fun, they're flippant, and they know how to write a pop song...

Book of Bad Breaks

imaginary ash — Thu, 31 May 2007 14:05:12 +0000

7.8

https://store.anticon.com/item.php?code=abr0072

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Thee More Shallows' last album, More Deep Cuts, was easily one of my top five records of 2005. On the San Francisco trio's new effort, Book of Bad Breaks, they trade in toy piano for space age distortion, resulting in a sound that is noticeably different from their previous outings. I'll admit I was disappointed when I realized this; but when I stopped expecting more of the same and allowed myself to listen purely, without any notions of what it should sound like, I began to like these songs. No, love. I began to love these songs. And when I recently saw them live (more on that to come), the deal was sealed.

The album splits its time between fully realized songs with vocals and choruses and hooks, and shorter intermittent instrumental pieces that are often distortion- and noise-heavy. Most of the time you don't notice that the track has changed, as they flow into one another effortlessly. Thee More Shallows followed similar paths on More Deep Cuts, and these shorter pieces serve well in both cases to tie songs together, creating a more fluid album.

The guts of this album are seven clever, expansive tracks that follow the band's traditional style of telling stories while melding genres and sounds. Sometimes ambient and trance-like, other times explosively rock 'n' roll, the band is innovative in much the same way as Menomena — in fact, if some brilliant promoter out there put these two bands on tour together it would be the bill of the year (note to brilliant promoters: I'm waiting...).

"Eagle Rock" appropriately establishes a soaring sound that combines keys and various noise effects, courtesy of drummers/synthers/bassists/jacks-of-all-trades Chavo Fraser and Jason Gonzales, with David "Dee" Kesler's pure, subdued vocals (with some echo tricks mixed in) and whistling. The next song, perhaps the album's most catchy and the one that everyone screamed for at their show, is "The Dutch Fist," which is multi-layered and full of aural texture, bridging the gap between the new sound and the Thee More Shallows of yore. "Night at the Knight School" follows suit, with a sort of ambient backdrop and a nice interplay of sonic explosions and recesses. After the first intermittent track (titled, appropriately, "Int 1"), "Proud Turkeys" launches with violins (or are they synths playing the role of violins?) and a screeching/halting noise effect. That song glides into "Fly Paper" via "Int 2"; "Fly Paper" is a fast-moving number that puts synths and distortion aside for the most part, relying on driving guitars and drums until the end. The string-laden "Int 3" connects "Fly Paper" to "Oh Yes, Another Mother," a strikingly emotional track that details the protagonist's family struggles with an ungrateful matriarch: "Mother you were first upon the beach, you stormed the wake boards and the free bar at Normandy / where they shot at grandpa's head." The following track, "The White Mask," continues the emotional tone, setting up a death scene with vivid imagery about meeting one's maker, over a reserved and sullen guitar and light distortion.

The album's next-to-last track, "Chrome Caps," is a four-minute instrumental that seems to drag the album a bit more than it should — it's one of those pieces that serves the musicians more than the listeners, rich in noise-jam pleasure but a little too long if you're not one of the jammers. (Note to friends of the TMS bandmembers: I have a good gift idea for their next birthdays.) The song's placement, segwaying into final track "Mo Deeper," ends the album on a slow experiment-y note, instead of leaving off with something more full and satisfying. But if you put the CD on repeat, you'll find that "Mo Deeper" leads delightfully back into album opener "D. Shallow," reprising the lyrics from that song in a slower, more introspective manner. These two tracks bookend the album gracefully. The band's strength is in creating an atmosphere of sound, drawing you in from the first note and not letting up. They make music that suits introspective moods, and it's best listened to when you can focus your full attention on it and pick up on the small nuances and grace of their musicianship. Book of Bad Breaks is indeed an album I have come to love, but I still think I love More Deep Cuts just a smidge more. Solution? Check out both (and/or either of their other two releases, which I've only heard pieces of), and try to get out to see them live — they're touring the U.S. now.

The band's strength is in creating an atmosphere of sound, drawing you in from the first note and not letting up.