Mike Watt & Friends: May 2, 2012 Le Poisson Rouge – FLAC and MP3 Downloads + Streaming SongPosted Thu, May 24th
Saturday, April 14th at Glasslands
Artist Websites
289 Kent Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11211Dinosaur Feathers
Dinosaur Feathers is a trio from Brooklyn who create "'50s/early-'60s-inspired pop music."
Greg and Derek sang a capella together at Carleton College in Minnesota. They built a following in New York after releasing a free EP on their website and playing shows on their own and as openers for other artists. After several line-up changes, the group will release their debut album in March 2010, followed by an appearance at SXSW.
User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License and may also be available under the GNU FDL.
Greg and Derek sang a capella together at Carleton College in Minnesota. They built a following in New York after releasing a free EP on their website and playing shows on their own and as openers for other artists. After several line-up changes, the group will release their debut album in March 2010, followed by an appearance at SXSW.
User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License and may also be available under the GNU FDL.
Dinosaur Feathers is a trio from Brooklyn who create "'50s/early-'60s-inspired pop music."
Greg and Derek sang a capella together at Carleton College in Minnesota. They built a following in New York after releasing a free EP on their website and playing shows on their own and as openers for other artists. After several line-up changes, the group will release their debut album in March 2010, followed by an appearance at SXSW.
User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License and may also be available under the GNU FDL.
Greg and Derek sang a capella together at Carleton College in Minnesota. They built a following in New York after releasing a free EP on their website and playing shows on their own and as openers for other artists. After several line-up changes, the group will release their debut album in March 2010, followed by an appearance at SXSW.
User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License and may also be available under the GNU FDL.
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Grandchildren
The drums smack you in the face first, like a hailstorm with no sign of letting up. Then, as waves of harmonies emerge unexpectedly, a joyous sensation sets in, as if someone just snapped you out of a fever dream. The beat-driven, orchestral-pop epics unfold like an audio scrapbook of memories from the life of Grandchildren songwriter Aleksander Martray.
"I was restless from a really young age," explains Martray, the son of a high-ranking military officer, born on an Army base in Germany and raised on both sides of the Atlantic. "Growing up in flux between different places I gravitated towards more intangible things like stories, melodies, movies, and dreams, and so early on music became a way of making a home for myself."
Grandchildren's debut album, Everlasting, feels like a culmination of all that restlessness. A sonic collage of the sentimental and the confrontational, the album is a safe haven for multiple realities- fusing tribal beats, frayed electronics, fireside folk melodies, richly-woven orchestral-pop flourishes and even field recordings from Martray's journeys across Central America, the Caribbean and Africa.
"The project began during my nomadic mid-20s. I was const [Read more]
"I was restless from a really young age," explains Martray, the son of a high-ranking military officer, born on an Army base in Germany and raised on both sides of the Atlantic. "Growing up in flux between different places I gravitated towards more intangible things like stories, melodies, movies, and dreams, and so early on music became a way of making a home for myself."
Grandchildren's debut album, Everlasting, feels like a culmination of all that restlessness. A sonic collage of the sentimental and the confrontational, the album is a safe haven for multiple realities- fusing tribal beats, frayed electronics, fireside folk melodies, richly-woven orchestral-pop flourishes and even field recordings from Martray's journeys across Central America, the Caribbean and Africa.
"The project began during my nomadic mid-20s. I was const [Read more]
The drums smack you in the face first, like a hailstorm with no sign of letting up. Then, as waves of harmonies emerge unexpectedly, a joyous sensation sets in, as if someone just snapped you out of a fever dream. The beat-driven, orchestral-pop epics unfold like an audio scrapbook of memories from the life of Grandchildren songwriter Aleksander Martray.
"I was restless from a really young age," explains Martray, the son of a high-ranking military officer, born on an Army base in Germany and raised on both sides of the Atlantic. "Growing up in flux between different places I gravitated towards more intangible things like stories, melodies, movies, and dreams, and so early on music became a way of making a home for myself."
Grandchildren's debut album, Everlasting, feels like a culmination of all that restlessness. A sonic collage of the sentimental and the confrontational, the album is a safe haven for multiple realities- fusing tribal beats, frayed electronics, fireside folk melodies, richly-woven orchestral-pop flourishes and even field recordings from Martray's journeys across Central America, the Caribbean and Africa.
"The project began during my nomadic mid-20s. I was constantly split between Baltimore, Philadelphia, DC, and travels abroad. I think the music is a reflection of a young person processing their own coming of age through constant self-inflicted culture shock. The textures of the final album span time and space," he says. "And yet, it comes across as one seamless reality. You can feel the influences but you can't put your finger on them."
During this time Martray's closest thing to home was a tiny third-floor bedroom in a dilapidated Victorian house in West Philadelphia known as Danger Danger. At the height of its illegal phase, this notorious DIY 'venue' hosted everything from IDM-infused metal (Genghis Tron) to frantic free-jazz (Marshall Allen of the Sun Ra Arkestra). These eclectic sounds billowed upstairs towards Martray's makeshift bedroom recording studio, taking what began as a solo experimentation in dizzying new directions.
"The songs evolved through the recording process," explains Martray, "they were so layered that when I went to play them live, so much had to be sampled. That's when I realized this wasn't a solo project. It's music for a small orchestra."
With that in mind, Martray brought his fellow housemates-a motley crew of instrument-swapping misfits-into the fold one by one. This included drummer Roman Salcic, a Croatian transplant reared on American rock music; jack of all trades Tristan Palazzolo; math-thrash guitarist Adam Katz; bassist/percussionist Russell Brodie; and classical-pianist-turned-synth-slinger John Vogel. Over the course of one daunting year, the group developed Grandchildren's 10-song album into a live set that's as seamless and widescreen as the recordings.
"It looks spontaneous to people," explains Katz, "but everything's carefully choreographed on our end."
A lot of that stems from a two-month North American tour in 2009, one that was plagued by chicken pox, blizzards, border patrols, and van break-ins. This not only brought them closer together; it gave Grandchildren the chance to perfect the ebb and flow of their live set.
"And now that everything's down to a science," says Martray, "the live performance is an art in and of itself. As full and layered as the sound has become, it rests on the backbone of those early bedroom recordings. Kind of like with a car, where you keep replacing parts until the whole thing is new. By the end you can't even remember what came from where. The process hides within the sound."
User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License and may also be available under the GNU FDL.
"I was restless from a really young age," explains Martray, the son of a high-ranking military officer, born on an Army base in Germany and raised on both sides of the Atlantic. "Growing up in flux between different places I gravitated towards more intangible things like stories, melodies, movies, and dreams, and so early on music became a way of making a home for myself."
Grandchildren's debut album, Everlasting, feels like a culmination of all that restlessness. A sonic collage of the sentimental and the confrontational, the album is a safe haven for multiple realities- fusing tribal beats, frayed electronics, fireside folk melodies, richly-woven orchestral-pop flourishes and even field recordings from Martray's journeys across Central America, the Caribbean and Africa.
"The project began during my nomadic mid-20s. I was constantly split between Baltimore, Philadelphia, DC, and travels abroad. I think the music is a reflection of a young person processing their own coming of age through constant self-inflicted culture shock. The textures of the final album span time and space," he says. "And yet, it comes across as one seamless reality. You can feel the influences but you can't put your finger on them."
During this time Martray's closest thing to home was a tiny third-floor bedroom in a dilapidated Victorian house in West Philadelphia known as Danger Danger. At the height of its illegal phase, this notorious DIY 'venue' hosted everything from IDM-infused metal (Genghis Tron) to frantic free-jazz (Marshall Allen of the Sun Ra Arkestra). These eclectic sounds billowed upstairs towards Martray's makeshift bedroom recording studio, taking what began as a solo experimentation in dizzying new directions.
"The songs evolved through the recording process," explains Martray, "they were so layered that when I went to play them live, so much had to be sampled. That's when I realized this wasn't a solo project. It's music for a small orchestra."
With that in mind, Martray brought his fellow housemates-a motley crew of instrument-swapping misfits-into the fold one by one. This included drummer Roman Salcic, a Croatian transplant reared on American rock music; jack of all trades Tristan Palazzolo; math-thrash guitarist Adam Katz; bassist/percussionist Russell Brodie; and classical-pianist-turned-synth-slinger John Vogel. Over the course of one daunting year, the group developed Grandchildren's 10-song album into a live set that's as seamless and widescreen as the recordings.
"It looks spontaneous to people," explains Katz, "but everything's carefully choreographed on our end."
A lot of that stems from a two-month North American tour in 2009, one that was plagued by chicken pox, blizzards, border patrols, and van break-ins. This not only brought them closer together; it gave Grandchildren the chance to perfect the ebb and flow of their live set.
"And now that everything's down to a science," says Martray, "the live performance is an art in and of itself. As full and layered as the sound has become, it rests on the backbone of those early bedroom recordings. Kind of like with a car, where you keep replacing parts until the whole thing is new. By the end you can't even remember what came from where. The process hides within the sound."
User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License and may also be available under the GNU FDL.
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Steel Phantoms
"Dual vocals bring spirited pop, stripped down new wave, and galloping rock into the two-thousand-and-tens."
Steel Phantoms are Aaron Harris (drum,vocals), Yos Munro (keyboard/vocals), Adam Fisher (bass), and Jesse Newkirk (guitar). Harris and Munro are high school friends who first played together in their hometown of Pittsburgh before both relocating to Montreal to study music at McGill University, hunkering down in the eye of the storm that was the media's endless fascination with everything Montreal in the mid-2000s. Harris in particular experienced the Canuck craze firsthand, taking over drumming duties in Islands in the wake of founding member Jaime Thompson's sudden departure from the band in 2006. Several tours and a few years later, Harris and Munro relocated yet again with the promise of a new musical project. Now, named after a roller coaster in Pittsburgh, utilizing many of the same pop idiosyncracies that defined the Montreal music scene, and headquartered amidst the endless hustle of Brooklyn, Steel Phantoms is very much a product of the past ten years of the duo's friendship and collaboration.
The songs are a wonderful blend of spiky pop music that shifts [Read more]
Steel Phantoms are Aaron Harris (drum,vocals), Yos Munro (keyboard/vocals), Adam Fisher (bass), and Jesse Newkirk (guitar). Harris and Munro are high school friends who first played together in their hometown of Pittsburgh before both relocating to Montreal to study music at McGill University, hunkering down in the eye of the storm that was the media's endless fascination with everything Montreal in the mid-2000s. Harris in particular experienced the Canuck craze firsthand, taking over drumming duties in Islands in the wake of founding member Jaime Thompson's sudden departure from the band in 2006. Several tours and a few years later, Harris and Munro relocated yet again with the promise of a new musical project. Now, named after a roller coaster in Pittsburgh, utilizing many of the same pop idiosyncracies that defined the Montreal music scene, and headquartered amidst the endless hustle of Brooklyn, Steel Phantoms is very much a product of the past ten years of the duo's friendship and collaboration.
The songs are a wonderful blend of spiky pop music that shifts [Read more]
"Dual vocals bring spirited pop, stripped down new wave, and galloping rock into the two-thousand-and-tens."
Steel Phantoms are Aaron Harris (drum,vocals), Yos Munro (keyboard/vocals), Adam Fisher (bass), and Jesse Newkirk (guitar). Harris and Munro are high school friends who first played together in their hometown of Pittsburgh before both relocating to Montreal to study music at McGill University, hunkering down in the eye of the storm that was the media's endless fascination with everything Montreal in the mid-2000s. Harris in particular experienced the Canuck craze firsthand, taking over drumming duties in Islands in the wake of founding member Jaime Thompson's sudden departure from the band in 2006. Several tours and a few years later, Harris and Munro relocated yet again with the promise of a new musical project. Now, named after a roller coaster in Pittsburgh, utilizing many of the same pop idiosyncracies that defined the Montreal music scene, and headquartered amidst the endless hustle of Brooklyn, Steel Phantoms is very much a product of the past ten years of the duo's friendship and collaboration.
The songs are a wonderful blend of spiky pop music that shifts and careens from start to finish in a very focused and mature way, unlocking melodies and progressions you probably didn't expect but are damn glad got your attention. It's a mix of the sweet and sour, the brash and the playful, a sinewy rope of rhythmic muscle allowing lighter pop flourishes to ebb and flow throughout; think Wolf Parade meets Leonard Bernstein and the picture starts to make sense. In turn, the two trade vocals from song to song in a way that accentuates these varying components of their music, Munro's baritone croon recalling Jonathan Richman's earnest swagger and Harris's kerosene-edged melodies flagging the sinister vibes running beneath.
-Ear Farm
Music available for purchase at http://steel-phantoms.bandcamp.com.
http://www.myspace.com/weresteelphantoms
User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License and may also be available under the GNU FDL.
Steel Phantoms are Aaron Harris (drum,vocals), Yos Munro (keyboard/vocals), Adam Fisher (bass), and Jesse Newkirk (guitar). Harris and Munro are high school friends who first played together in their hometown of Pittsburgh before both relocating to Montreal to study music at McGill University, hunkering down in the eye of the storm that was the media's endless fascination with everything Montreal in the mid-2000s. Harris in particular experienced the Canuck craze firsthand, taking over drumming duties in Islands in the wake of founding member Jaime Thompson's sudden departure from the band in 2006. Several tours and a few years later, Harris and Munro relocated yet again with the promise of a new musical project. Now, named after a roller coaster in Pittsburgh, utilizing many of the same pop idiosyncracies that defined the Montreal music scene, and headquartered amidst the endless hustle of Brooklyn, Steel Phantoms is very much a product of the past ten years of the duo's friendship and collaboration.
The songs are a wonderful blend of spiky pop music that shifts and careens from start to finish in a very focused and mature way, unlocking melodies and progressions you probably didn't expect but are damn glad got your attention. It's a mix of the sweet and sour, the brash and the playful, a sinewy rope of rhythmic muscle allowing lighter pop flourishes to ebb and flow throughout; think Wolf Parade meets Leonard Bernstein and the picture starts to make sense. In turn, the two trade vocals from song to song in a way that accentuates these varying components of their music, Munro's baritone croon recalling Jonathan Richman's earnest swagger and Harris's kerosene-edged melodies flagging the sinister vibes running beneath.
-Ear Farm
Music available for purchase at http://steel-phantoms.bandcamp.com.
http://www.myspace.com/weresteelphantoms
User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License and may also be available under the GNU FDL.
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