Music

Jimmy Edgar

The Decibel Festival guide claimed that the Warp Records showcase on Wednesday evening would be for fans of Prince, which led to some confusion for me. Would that be in reference to main headliner and mad music scientist Clark? Certainly not. Then who?

The winner of the prestigious association — and pleasant surprise for the festival — turned out to be 1983-baby and astrology-enthusiast Jimmy Edgar. Edgar, a most handsome and dapper fellow, rose to the stage behind a stripped-down version of the LED light rig he usually travels with, ready to perform his 2012 Hotflush release, Majenta. No hitches here, it seemed… until the projections behind Edgar began to fill the screen.

The generic and low-quality visuals, which were more suitable for Windows 95 screensavers than for Edgar’s clean productions, seemed like a stock offer from Decibel rather than Edgar’s own choice. They became a painfully glaring and vibe-dampening reminder that the newfound “necessity” of supplying electronic shows with accompanying visuals can sometimes go awry when the visuals are tasteless, or of a different taste than the musician’s music. They were distracting, to say the least, and it was unfortunate that habit dictated that they received much more attention than they warranted. (Apologies, I suppose, if they are indeed Edgar’s creation, though I doubt it, and the criticism remains.)

Unfortunate visuals aside, Edgar queued up quite a dance party by passionately embracing every type of electronic music that might even be tangentially related to Prince — from C&C Music Factory-type club jams and dirty ’80s breaks to breathy R&B-influenced slow jams. Soul was at the heart of all of Edgar’s music, and its presence in his body was also clear, from his intense concentration to his spontaneously fabulous uses of vocoder. Such sensory vibage was not lost upon the audience, either. Never have I seen a grouping of men so stoked about the performance of another man, as man after ecstatic man screamed, “Jimmaaaay!!!!!” as though they were going to tear their shirts off in support of Edgar at any given minute. Twas one of the best shows I saw at Decibel, and most certainly one that made a lasting impression.

 

In its third year, Culture Collide Festival will be welcoming 63 artists from 25 countries to Los Angeles in the span of four days. Other than SXSW, there are very few festivals that consciously provide such an international scope of the indie music scene. And considering how common it is for international bands to come across visa issues, Culture Collide takes on an admirable task in the name of global harmony. The nice thing about the festival is that most artists schedule more than one show during those four days. So while you may stick to the big names for one night, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to take a chance on a few unknowns that hail from a country across the globe.

SEE ALL 14 FESTIVAL PICKS

of Montreal (USA)

Saturday, October 6 – 12:00am @ The Echoplex
Sunday, October 7th – 8:00pm @ The Main Stage
It’s pretty impossible to not have fun at an of Montreal show. This group is kooky with a whirlwind of pop, psychedelia, electro, and glam. And with six members, it’s always a party on stage. There will probably be some costumes too, so just embrace it, don’t ask questions. of Montreal have recently have recently released Daughter of Cloud, a compilation of 17 of Montreal recordings from the time of their Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? era to the present. The track “Hindlopp Stat” from the album is below, along with the tripped-out music video for “Spiteful Intervention”, from Paralytic Stalks.

Bonde do Rolê (Brazil)

Sunday, October 7 – 5:30pm @ The Main Stage
Even if you don’t understand Portuguese, Bonde do Rolê are so worth your time. Heavily hyped by Diplo, the trio is always out to start a sweaty dance party and is known for singing about having a crazy good time. The group features a female and male MC who roll quick lyrics over club beats that you’d hear in the US and a type of Brazilian dance music called funk carioca. Just remember, it gets pretty sweltering on the other side of the equator.

SEE ALSO: Bonde Do Role + DIPLO + BRAZILIAN ARTISTS & MUSICIANS

++ SEE ALL: REMIX CITY POSTS – MUSIC COLUMNS – FULL POST

Tame Impala

In the same way that Thee Oh Sees can work their mastery of garage rock over the unassuming masses and make it look ridiculously simple, Tame Impala can twork it out ’60s-style in the indie rock arena, like laid-back experts drowsily saying, “We’ve got this, dudes.” Canyons‘ Wooly Mammoth remix-interpretation of Tame Impala’s “Elephant” pays homage to the modern beast’s ancient ancestor and taps along like tesselated rows of the hairy beasts, propelling a rhythm forward with their marching bodies. Todd Rungren‘s remix spaces things out a bit by weaving sound experiments into important points of the track. See and hear more about Tame Impala’s upcoming release, Lonerism, on Modular Recordings. The music video for the original can be seen after the jump.

Tame Impala – “Elephant” (Canyons’ Wooly Mammoth Remix)

Tame Impala – “Elephant” (Todd Rundgren Remix)

SEE ALL POSTS RELATED TO MIDDAY VEIL

FULL TOUR DATES, PRESS PHOTOS, AND MORE CONTINUED IN FULL POST

Fontanelle

Ever-trustworthy metal tastemakers Southern Lord Records are releasing the latest from Portland rock experimentalists Fontanelle! Their last three releases were escapades in ambient jazz-rock weirdness released on Kranky Records in the early aughts. Vitamin F, to be released on October 23rd, is a record for music nerds who love to be lost in the sounds of horns, guitars, and drums interfacing with one another in unpredictable ways. The massive lineup includes musicians such as Rex Ritter, Andy Brown, Mat Morgan, Borg Norm, Brian Foote and Paul Dickow, as well as the following guests: Gentry Densley (Eagle Twin), Steve Moore (Earth, sunn 0))), Hans Teuber, Eric Walton (Skerik), Jef Brown (Jackie O Motherfucker) and Dave Carter.

This is a record for music nerds, no doubt. Spin Magazine calls the record “it may be the most metal record to feature no actual metal on it whatsoever”, and that may actually be the most accurate possible description. You can stream “When the Fire Hits the Forest” from Vitamin F via Spin.

Says the press relase:

For this brand new recording, FONTANELLE has been trying to transport themselves back in time to 1973 into Patrick Gleeson’s Different Fur Trading Company Studio. Through the studio expertise of Randall Dunn (sunn 0))), Black Mountain, Wolves in the Throne Room), it sounds like they made it!

Rex Ritter’s tour of duty with sunn 0))) during FONTANELLE’s hiatus seems to have irreparably changed his DNA, as well as the entire band’s. Adding an amazing array of horn players, many of whom were heard on the most recent sunn 0))) LP Monoliths & Dimensions, FONTANELLE have fortified their jazz vocabulary and have conjured a burly fusion approach that has been dubbed “White Magus” – a sound sure to appeal to fans of Miles Davis (circa 1969-74), Toritse and Mahavishnu Orchestra.

Now in its tenth year, Seattle’s Decibel Festival has grown from a tiny electronic celebration to a world-renowned music festival without sacrificing attention to detail along the way. From fabric wristbands to the notable lack of corporate sponsors — save for ones that directly affect the electronic music scene in some way — Decibel has retained a number of the charming qualities which usually become lost to larger festivals. Its continued stress on the audio-visual merging of music and motion art continue to push the festival forward as well, as Seattle’s best venues were sometimes upgraded with video equipment and makeshift spaces were sometimes transformed into festival-worthy ones.

Decibel’s continued Optical series is the festival’s low-key element, which focuses on mixed media programming that combines ambient, modern classical and experimental sound art with live video, films and installations.

This review highlights some of Optical 2012′s best moments, in our eyes, with reviews of performances by Robert Henke, Biosphere, and The Sight Below.

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Robert Henke

Optical 1: Ghosts In The Shadows — September 26th, 2012 @ The Triple Door, Seattle, WA
Written by VIVIAN HUA

With the pounding of chaotic weather against manmade walls, Robert Henke introduced the crowd at The Triple Door to six channels of surround sound. The stage itself stood dark and empty, with the maestro nowhere to be seen.

Rain in one ear morphed into train tracks rattling by; howling winds in the other transformed into vehicles and airplanes soaring past. Henke’s sounds were so convincing of reality and so unseeming that the audience at The Triple Door carried on with conversation well into the opening minutes of the performance. But as the light rain increased into a torrential downpour, it gave way to machine-like sputtering and alien crackling, and those who hadn’t been paying attention finally began to do so.

SHOW REVIEW CONTINUED BELOW

Top Ten Hits For The End Of The World Tracks & Backstories

Prince Rama have long been about chasing the conceptual with their multimedia-encompassing theatrics, but their latest idea, Top Ten Hits For The End Of The World, takes our collective 2012 fascination with the apocalypse and turns it into a most playful collection of pop hits. In my opinion, this record, which is comprised of ten tracks from ten fictional bands — all of which have extensive back stories crafted by the girls themselves — is the duo’s strongest to date. With Ariel Pink lo-fi vibes but with collation of genres both fictional and invented (“cosmic disco”, “motorcycle rock”, and “ghost-modern glam”, to name a few), the model of Top Ten Hits… frees the girls from the binds of expectation and allows the to run free on all fronts.

Rage Peace – “So Destroyed” (as channeled by Prince Rama)
For the album’s first single, Prince Rama took on the nihilistic protest band Rage Peace’s violent-turned-pop songs. According to the press release, “Rage Peace formed as a small protest band in the early 90s and before they knew it they were the Bob Dylans of a whole generation of angry youth. They became founding members of the Rage Peace movement, based on the principle of nihilism as the only true order, and wrote songs with violent messages placed in seemingly saccharine pop structures. The band was notorious for staging organized acts of violence and destruction, burning cars and sometimes buildings in the name of chaos. When the end came, their bodies were found locked inside a limousine they had set on fire. The license plate read ‘HEY U’.”

In talking about the intersection of art, media and music as we so often do at Redefine, there are few artists who truly embody those traits as much as the revered Brian Eno. The man who has been responsible for such landmark albums as Another Green World, Here Come The Warm Jets and his collaborative effort My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, is set to release his first solo album in over seven years. Lux is a four track, twelve segment ambient movement which is described by Eno as an extension of his previous ambient period “Music for Thinking,” which included the release of Discreet Music and Neroli. Set for release on Warp Records on November 13th, Lux is being described as sonically similar to Music for Films and Music for Airports, two of Eno’s more interesting movements. Only time will tell if Lux is truly “one of Eno’s most ambitious work’s to date,” but I have a feeling that’s not a phrase he uses lightly.

LUX TRACKLISTING
1. LUX 1 (19:22)
2. LUX 2 (18:14)
3. LUX 3 (19:19)
4. LUX 4 (18:28)

FORMATS
- Vinyl (Double 180g LP in gatefold sleeve with 4 x 300x300mm prints and download redemption code card)
- CD (CD in gatefold sleeve with 4 x 120x120mm prints)
- Download

LUX will be released in North America on November 13, 2012 (on CD and Download) and December 11, 2012 (on LP) on Warp Records.

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