Underground Hottlanta: The Hijacking Music Collective


Miles From Pangea

One of the many things I love about the Atlanta music scene is the sense of community that is very prevalent between artists, and everyone else associated with it. It is common around here for bands who share a vision to come together and help each other promote themselves and record and things like that. Industrial Strength Promotions is great example of this.

Recently I became aware of one such conglomerate called “Hijacking Music”. It consists of 3 new and talented bands including 13 Day Mission (ATL), Beatrix Kiddo (Athens), and Miles From Pangea (Marietta). All three are instrumental groups that I would consider in the greater realm of post-rock and everything I’ve heard from them shows a ton of promise and potential. They have a recording studio they use called the “O Zone Lair” and they even have a blog: O Team Press. Give them a listen:

13 Day Mission : Eat All Speaking Canaries

13 Day Mission : El Spectaculare

Beatrix Kiddo : Lena

Beatrix Kiddo : Dominique Dawes

Miles From Pangea : Blackwater Pond

Miles From Pangea : Crimson Sky

In terms of official releases, so far there is only 13 Day Mission‘s EP from last year, Ex Incendia Libertas, which I have been jamming out constantly over the last couple weeks, and it is available for free at their myspace. I highly recommend you go pick that up. Also, this Friday night, you can catch all three bands at 11:11 Teahouse with me for what looks to be a pretty awesome night of music and art:

13 Day Mission Myspace

Beatrix Kiddo Myspace

Miles From Pangea Myspace


13 Day Mission

The Hometown Hottness: Atlas Sound


photo by Biggie C

Last week we caught the Atlas Sound show at The Drunken Unicorn (2/19/08). For those who don’t know yet, Atlas Sound is the solo project of Deerhunter‘s Bradford Cox. He just released his first full-length album, Let The Blind Lead those Who Can See But Cannot Feel, but it is far from the first material he has put out under the Atlas Sound name. On his blog, Cox regularly puts out material he makes over a weekend, or old stuff he did when he was a kid, or all sorts of interesting music available to everyone for free. To me, his blog is a revolutionary medium for musicians. While there certainly have been plenty of extremely prolific artists before him, Bradford is able to have a much more intimate experience with his audience, regularly giving away his material to his fans directly, and so far, there is no one else who is pulling this off so successfully. As the Internet continues to steer the world of music into interesting directions, Mr. Cox has embraced these trends and utilized them to enhance his art.

What’s even better is that almost all of his material that I have listened to in this way is good. I’m still jamming out the Orange Ohms Glow EP constantly that he put on his site weeks ago. The new proper LP is stunning too, a very different beast than Cryptograms.

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Underground Hottlanta: Slushco

Since taking up this Ohmpark project, it never ceases to amaze me how many great bands from Atlanta that I continue to discover. The deeper I dig, the more talented artists I find. Slushco was another of the plethora of bands I had heard of, but never really looked into hard until recently, upon hearing about the new album, When I Met The Boss of Nova. Showing up late to this party, I’ve found that Slushco is no longer a band and is now a solo project of Brian Slusher. I contacted Brian via Myspace so he could tell a noob like me what the dilly is: “As far as Slushco, it is strictly a one man studio project now. The band fell apart when Mikey the synth player left for Germany. We toyed with the idea of replacing him but, band morale was collectively down. Aaron the drummer also wanted to concentrate on his other interests. While all of this was happening, I was quietly making the Nova album.”

Brian stressed that the band’s demise was an amicable one. “It was actually better for all of us. We wanted different things and that’s ok. We’re all still friends.” He went on to talk about the new album that was originally planned to be a solo album for him. “At first, the goal was to prove that you can make a record with a $24 casio keyboard that I bought off Ebay. One of my friends was complaining that he couldn’t get his stuff sounding like mine in his home studio. I was trying to encourage him to try anything. Then I actually started making really fun songs with the casio. The first song I wrote for the album was Photograph. I would take it into my kitchen and play around while I was waiting for my pasta to boil. Voila! Being that it keeps tempo very well, it was easy to play notes with my right hand and switch beat settings simultaneously with my left hand. Casio’s are great. You should get one if you don’t already have one. So eventually, the casio became a one trick pony. I quickly started programming beats with the same plastic feel. It would have been very boring if I hadn’t used other drum sounds.”

Mr. Slusher is not stopping there as he has some more releases planned for this year: “I am also putting out The Silver Surface for sure. This was going to be the album after Clouds but, we just didn’t get around to recording it while all of the breakups and replacements were going on. The recordings are my original demos that I made for the bandmates. There are lots of blemishes and harsh sounds but at the same time, it’s really honest. I didn’t want to rerecord it without the original members and I also don’t want it to go unheard. I guess I’m setting myself up for criticism. It’s a very dynamic and flashy album. Our last few shows were based around it. There’s also one called The Softer Side of Synchronicity that I am currently working on. As always, they will be my standard 7 song format. I think people get bored with the same topic if it’s too long.”

I think this 7 song structure is a very interesting way to format an album and I think he is on to something about being able to make a thematic album more effective in a shorter span of time. Another thing I’ve learned since doing this blog thing is that EPs are really underrated. As for seeing Sluscho in a live capacity anytime soon, it may only be wishful thinking. “I don’t know if I will play any shows for a while. It’s really hard to get all of the people together and actually do well. I love being in my studio. I feel like I’m actually being more honest with the music listener on record rather than playing a bad show and pretending to enjoy myself. Good shows are great. Bad shows are devastating.”

Since downloading a copy of Nova (to cut down on distribution costs, so far he is only releasing it digitally), I’ve been jamming it out relentlessly and I can’t recommend it enough. It is easily one of the best albums to come out so far this year. Here’s a little Slushco to try:

Slushco : When I Met The Boss Of Nova : Photograph

Slushco : Slushco : Getting Through A Normal Day

Slushco Myspace

Buy When I Met the Boss of Nova Here

Buy other Slushco albums here

Underground Hottlanta: This Piano Plays Itself

By now, you know all about the bigger local acts that are blowing the city up, like Deerhunter, Mastodon, Black Lips, Snowden, etc. Well, those superstars aren’t the only ITP folks that are churning out the kickass tunes. This new Ohmpark series is going to be all about finding the less known, newer faces that are warrioring the scene. One newer band that is really impressing me and showing a ton of potential is This Piano Plays Itself. After playing a killer set at Home Park Fest (which we will have video up from soon), I got a copy of their “Pre-Demo Demo” and have been jamming it hard lately. They take post-rock and electronica jams and arrange them in more conventional structures that utilize vocals/lyrics and create a really cool hybrid. Give it a listen:

Oh Haste The Proletariat Waits

Awake And Asleep

There Are Segments Of Revolving

All those songs plus more are available on their Myspace page, so go hit them up. I’m excited to see what their finished product is going to be like and expect big things from these guys in 2008.

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