Tonight In The A: The Mars Volta, Sunset Rubdown, Indian Jewelry, Tree Creature


Sunset Rubdown

I plan on getting to the Tabernacle early to set up for The Mars Volta show starting at 8pm and then a few hours later heading to The Earl to catch Sunset Rubdown (and Nomen Novum is opening!). I am extremely excited about both of these shows, so it’s gonna be a helluva night. Also, Indian Jewelry is playing with Atlanta avant-garde artists Tenth To The Moon and Tree Creature at Eyedrum. You really need to go to one of these:

The Mars Volta : Agadez

Sunset Rubdown : The Taming Of The Hands That Came Back To Life

Indian Jewelry : Dirty Hands

Tree Creature : Nautilus Now Silver Implodes


Tree Creature

Live Review: Indian Jewelry, Tree Creature, Gold Painted Nails (5/18/2008) Eyedrum


Indian Jewelry setting up for their show.

The Sunday night before last, I went down to Eyedrum to catch this one. No matter how many times I go to Eyedrum for shows, I almost always forget where it is and get lost for a minute. This time it delayed me just long enough to get caught in a downpour of rain. After entering the venue and quickly glancing over the art hanging in the gallery, I made my way to the concert venue in the back. There were chairs set up on the floor area this time and on a table by the wall, Indian Jewelry had their merch displayed under a trifold board like kids use for the science fair. I grabbed a seat and a few moments later someone announced that Gold Painted Nails was going on up front. The crowd slowly made its way to the tiny gallery in the very front that I didn’t even realize existed to catch a short and sweet set from GPN. The one man project from Chris Attack was a somewhat minimalist approach to electronic noise jamming. Industrial-esque beats and dog barking-type vocal loops are always a great combo.

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Tonight In The A: Indian Jewelry

I’m pretty stoked about the Indian Jewelry show at Eyedrum tonight. I loved their last album, Invasive Exotics, and they were very interesting to see live when I caught them at SXSW this year. They have a new album out on Tuesday called Free Gold!. Here’s a few tracks to entice you to see them tonight:

Indian Jewelry : Free Gold! : Swans

Indian Jewelry : Free Gold! : Temporary Famine Ship

Here’s a really weird promo video for the upcoming album:

Seriously, do yourself a favour and catch this show tonight. Even the openers are worth looking into.

SXSW 2008 Day 2: Thursday

Yesterday I started my day at Emo’s, but it was so crowded and I wasn’t really digging the bands I heard so, I dipped out across the street to the Brooklyn Vegan party at Emo’s Annex (there are about 700 different Emo’s venues) because the BV party the night before was so much fun. I caught a band called WHY? that was pretty good.

After that, I decided to just walk up and down the main strip and listen to the music coming from each bar and try to discover some bands I hadn’t heard of. Outside some Irish pub I heard a really intriguing band, so I went inside to check them out. It was a band from Dublin, Ireland called Delorentos. They were total dance-rock, like Bloc Party before they started getting all soft and lame. I got a live video, but Google video is acting hella lame today, so I can’t post the plethora of vids i took yesterday until a later date. But I did manage to find their official video(although I don’t think it is their best song):

After some more walking around I heard another band that sounded promising from a dive called Agave. The Brooklyn, New York trio Appomattox rocked really hard, doing loud post-punky rock.

After that it was time to head back to the Annex, where I caught Men, members of Le Tigre doing the laptop DJ thing. The day before, me and Biggie C were discussing this new trend where bands go DJ and how most of the time they aren’t that good at it, but this was an exception as they rocked the dance floor hard.

After that, it was time for Phosphorescent, one of the artists I was most excited about seeing at SXSW. He put on a great performance, doing much heavier versions of his stuff than I would have guessed considering how soft and low-key the album is.

Near the end of the show, I noticed Matthew Houck kept looking at someone in the crowd and cracking up laughing. I finally heard someone screaming stuff at him and turned around. It turned out to be Miles Seaton of Akron/Family acting like he was an obsessed fan. For the Phosphorescent finale, he came down into the audience and sang to the Akron/Family boys:

After that, we stuck around and caught Holy Fuck. I’m not much of a dancer and these days it takes something really special to get me to throw down, but Holy Fuck is just the perfect combination of dance music and noise for me to get really into it. You ATLiens who will be around town on Monday really need to go down to The Drunken Unicorn and catch them playing with A Place To Bury Strangers and Atlanta’s badasses All The Saints.

After a short break in the onslaught of great shows, I went and caught Islands. They played almost nothing but new material, and it sounds great. I took a ton of videos, so expect those to show up here sometime in the next few weeks.

After that, it was on to Mohawk’s patio to catch one of then night’s best line-ups. I got there just in time to catch the end of another Phosphorescent set, where he closed with a 10 minute vocal looping jam. After that, I discovered another great act from California called Bodies Of Water. Really cool stuff with lots of vocal harmonizations. They will be at The Earl Monday night with Sons And Daughters so there is another hot Atlanta St. Patty’s Day show you can catch.

Then it was time for Evangelicals. I have been in total love with their new album, so I had been really hyped up for this show. They did not disappoint. They came out with massive blacklights and a fog machine, dressed in a style that was half goth, half candy-raver, and went through songs off the new record. Again, expect many live videos to pop up around here in the near future.

Next up on the outdoor stage was Bon Iver. They went through a handful of the beautiful songs on For Emma, Forever Ago, and wow did they sound good. If you have yet to pick up this album, you are missing out.

After that, we switched up things entirely by seeing Indian Jewelry. I would describe their sound as Liars meets Atlanta’s Subliminator. It was a spectacle of strobe lights and minimalist percussionists that were there more to dance than to make music. Very interesting show.

We closed out the night at Emo’s Outside stage. I got there just in time for the end of Islands’ set, but this time they closed with the amazing “Swans (Life After Death)”. Unfortunately, the one dark moment of the entire festival came as some sound guy walked out on stage with a few minutes left in the song right and the PA shut off. They actually cut off their last song. Nick Thorburn found a microphone that was still hooked into the PA and yelled “Fuck SXSW!” Everyone started booing, it was a crazy scene.

After that debacle, We ended our night with an awesome set from Austin’s The Octopus Project.

It’s on to more music, so I’ll holla at you later.

Sugarkane’s Top 50 Albums of 2006

2006 was a great year for me, and the main reasons are mostly related to music. I decided to do this list in December because i wanted to learn about as much music as possible, and what I thought would take a few days ended up taking almost 2 months, but it was extremely educational for me and i feel very good about this list. There were so many albums that I would like to give props to and cutting it down to 50 was hard. On a technical note, I went by U.S. release date with the exception of Laura’s Radio Swan Is Down (It was released in Australia over a year ago and has no U.S. release date). Feel free to blast it:

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