Ohmpark Mixtape #23: 2012, A Prologue
Here’s a collection of songs by local artists that just missed my 2011 blogging season. All of these deserve their own blog post, but I haven’t had the time. So instead, I used them to build a mixtape. You can click on the album art images below to find more about each song:
Easily Suede : “Great Fantastic”
Lotus Plaza : “Christmas In Whosbekistanstanstan”
Damon Moon & The Whispering Drifters : “Seasonal Suite #62″
- Posted by Davy Minor on December 26, 2011 at 9:20 pm
- 1 Comment
[Mp3] The Runaway Five (Live @ Eyedrum 9/8/10)
The Runaway Five is Lockett Pundt (Deerhunter, Lotus Plaza) and Dan Wakefield (Ominous Castle, Abby Go Go)
The Runaway Five : Live @ Eyedrum 9/8/10
Ifilmbands has video of the performance here.
You can download Warning Light‘s set here and Young Again‘s set here. Photos of the three acts are here.
Thanks to Robby Kee and Nathan Brown for this.
- Posted by Davy Minor on September 14, 2010 at 5:13 am
- 1 Comment
[Mp3] Lotus Plaza: “Red Oak Way” (Warm Ghost Remix)
With the new Deerhunter record just on the horizon, their blog has gotten a bit more active as of late. Lockett Pundt posted up the opening track from the Lotus Plaza record treated to a brilliant remix by a Brooklyn duo called Warm Ghost. Give it a listen:
Lotus Plaza : “Red Oak Way” (Warm Ghost Remix)
- Posted by Davy Minor on July 21, 2010 at 4:59 am
- 1 Comment
Ohmpark’s Top 20 Atlanta Albums Of 2009
Most of the time in this city, bands rise and fall based on who they know and how exciting they are live. But for this list, I’ve considered only what is contained on their recordings. Over the course of the year I’ve given roughly 75 records from inside the perimeter a spin, and these are the essential twenty that I recommend listening to most. There are actually many records that I really liked that just missed the cut, so this was very tough to piece together, especially the final spots.
Looking at this list and comparing it back to my favourite local stuff over the two years before, it’s apparent that music in this city just keeps getting better. Atlanta’s independent music scene is running deeper than ever both in terms of quality and quantity of music being produced. Outside of Brooklyn, you’d need quite a compelling argument to convince me anywhere else in America has a better scene right now. Promising young bands keep popping up out of nowhere, and the veterans keep delivering the goods. It sure makes my job here a lot easier to have so much great music to blog about.
On a technical note, anything that has been released over the holidays I’m grouping in with my 2010 lists, and so a couple of albums on this list were released over the holidays last year. Take a gander:
20. Noot d’ Noot: Cash For Gold
19. Harken The Hands Askew: Thou
18. Slushco: Sometime Tonight
17. Sound On Film: The Eloquent Reginald
16. Thy Mighty Contract: Thy Mighty Contract
15. Club Awesome: Dynamos
14. Jungol: Places
13. Lee Harvey Oswald: Lee Harvey Oswald
12. The Selmanaires: Tempo Temporal
11. Tealights: Take Us By Sea
10. Deerhunter: Rainwater Cassette Exchange
9. Slushco: The Silver Surface Demos
8. The Orphins: Wish You Well
7. Mastodon: Crack The Skye
6. Lotus Plaza: Floodlight Collective
5. From Exile: Monolith
4. Nomen Novum: Paradises
3. Untied States: Instant Everything, Constant Nothing
2. Atlas Sound: Logos
1. Nomen Novum: November
In the Atlanta music scene, 2009 was the year of Nomen Novum. While most musicians take a whole year to scrap together enough decent songs to fill a good EP, the prolific Nomen Novum were able to drop two virtually perfect full-lengths, plus a great live EP, and they’re already posting new stuff to their myspace.
Although, all five records at the top of my list were legitimate contenders for Atlanta album of the year, and I would have probably been content with any ordering between them. The other 3 records to round out my top 5 each happened to be crafted over about 2 years, and the extra time and care in putting them together just right payed off. A big mistake I notice younger bands make is trying to push out a record too quickly on some arbitrary time scale and in the end get stuck with something that is less than what they are capable of producing. Atlas Sound, Untied States, and From Exile all spent more time than they probably wanted to on their respective albums, but the extra effort was well worth it in the end.
Looking back over this list after I finished it, I noticed that it is almost entirely dominated by veterans of the scene, and mostly by artists I was already familiar with before starting this blog. There is only one true first recording from its respective musicians to make the list. If I were to make a “Best Atlanta Artists of the Decade” shortlist, most of those artists would have an album included on this list, so I feel like it is a good snapshot of not just where the scene is at today, but where it has been heading for the latter part of the ’00s. There is so much diversity in sound and so much talent in this city, and if you have any interest at all in Atlanta’s music scene, don’t let anything on this list slip by you, because all twenty are well worth giving a listen.
- Posted by Davy Minor on December 13, 2009 at 10:20 pm
- 3 Comments
Live Show: Lotus Plaza @ Eyedrum (9/22/09)
Last night’s Lotus Plaza show exceeded my expectations and was about as good as it gets for a one man live show. Lockett Pundt (Deerhunter) looped his guitar playing and singing into slow, meticulous build ups. He also played material from The Floodlight Collective with a sampler aiding in filling out all of the parts. Considering this was his first ever solo show, everything sounded extremely tight. The Tree Creature boys recorded the audio (and did an a great job, it sounds amazing) and Bradford Cox posted it on the Deerhunter blog mere hours after it taking place, so if you want to download it, go get it here. Give a listen to the whole 43 minute set:
Lotus Plaza @ Eyedrum (9/22/09)
- Posted by Davy Minor on September 23, 2009 at 4:34 am
- No Comments
An Atlanta Mp3 Trilogy: Lotus Plaza, Jeffrey Butzer, The Good Graces
Deerhunter @ Variety Playhouse (Halloween 2008)
Ever since Deerhunter‘s Lockett Pundt released his The Floodlight Collective under his Lotus Plaza moniker, I had been really hoping I would get a chance to see him do his solo thing live. So I was overjoyed yesterday when I discovered that Lotus Plaza will be opening for The Books next month. While I’m certainly a huge fan of Bradford Cox, I think Pundt’s essential contributions to the greatness that is Deerhunter cannot be overemphasized. Here is a Lotus Plaza track that actually managed to end up on Weird Era Cont in a slightly different version:
Lotus Plaza : Dot Gain
Buy The Floodlight Collective
Lotus Plaza myspace
Jeffrey Butzer @ Corndogorama 2009
Atlanta musical virtuoso Jeffrey Butzer recently released his second full-length, The Garden Of Scissors, which in addition to being a great album that I have been listening to often, is also a soundtrack to a screen play Butzer has written. Almost every instrument on the record is performed by him, which comes as no surprise to those of you familiar with his one-man-band solo live performances. His unique brand of mostly instrumental “Classical Lo-Fi” manages to sound epic and simplistic at the same time. The only element I can’t seem to get into is the guest vocalist, but luckily every song she is featured on also has an instrumental counterpart included. Here is the title track:
Jeffrey Butzer : The Garden Of Scissors
Buy The Garden Of Scissors
Jeffrey Butzer myspace
Kim Ware of The Good Graces
The Good Graces, masterminded by Eskimo Kiss Records founder Kim Ware, are releasing a new EP called Bring On The Tambourines!. They are giving away each track one by one up until the actual release of the record next month. With only two tracks released so far, Tambourines sees Ware move in a more fun and playful direction away from the heartfelt, personal and emotional tone of last year’s debut, Sunset Over Saxapahaw. Here is the first song released, and you can track down the second in the link below:
The Good Graces : Working Title
Download another mp3 from Bring On The Tambourines! EP
The Good Graces myspace
- Posted by Davy Minor on August 12, 2009 at 3:49 pm
- No Comments
What The Hell Am I Listening To?!?
The three best Spring 2009 releases from Georgia:
Lotus Plaza
While Bradford Cox gets the lion share of credit and attention when people talk about Deerhunter, the band is far from a solo endeavor. The quiet genius of Lockett Pundt is the ying to Cox’s yang. His debut album under his code name, Lotus Plaza, demonstrates not only the impressive talent Pundt possesses, but the music itself parallels his seemingly humble, stoic stage persona. Everything has this weird, distant detachment to its sound and the whole thing feels like a background. What initially attracted me to Deerhunter in the first place were the ambient, instrumental jams on Cryptograms, and those ideas seemed to be fleshed out much further on The Floodlight Collective. I feel like I peel back a new layer every time I listen to this record, so be advised this is a grower that may not hit you that hard upon your first listen, but I think it is one of the best to come out this year.
Mastodon
Mastodon have returned with a record that is more psychedelic rock ‘n’ roll than metal. At times it reminds me of the best of Metallica, Black Sabbath, and Pink Floyd, but still remains completely a thing all its own. The record showcases just how successful this band is at straddling the line between arena rock massiveness and avant-garde artfulness. Crack The Skye is a logical progression for the band, and the best thing about this album is that it gives you exactly what you were expecting and hoping for from the follow up to Blood Mountain. I know I had some giant expectations, and they have been completely fulfilled. Here are the first two tracks to start your journey:
Venice Is Sinking
photo by: Ian Darken
Athens’ Venice Is Sinking have finally unveiled their sophomore effort, AZAR, and it is a gorgeous yet surprisingly difficult release. Something about the pacing makes it hard to penetrate, and it has taken me a while to learn to love this record, but love it I do. It is simply unapologetic about its heavy employment of emotional builds and pushing dreamy lushness to its limits. Seven songs are strung together by the four part instrumental title track combing the best of both worlds between conceptualism and exceptional pop music. With Arcade Fire fallen back to Earth and Sufjan Stevens missing in action, the symphonic indie rock approach has become a lot less hip these days, but fashionable or not, Venice Is Sinking have created an outstanding collection of music that you should pick up:
Venice Is Sinking : Iron Range
Buy AZAR
- Posted by Davy Minor on April 13, 2009 at 6:06 am
- 1 Comment
Deerhunter News
If you haven’t already heard, Deerhunter are going to be on hiatus for an undisclosed amount of time. This is all according to a post by Bradford Cox on their blog. I’ll repost the letter below for you:
Goodbye 21st Century
So we have one show left tomorrow night in Leipzig, Germany. Then we drive through the night to Prague where we fly home from early in the morning. This tour has been really insane. We met a lot of amazing people and finally got to play the UK, making our debut at the forum even. We are totally grateful for the opportunity to play everywhere we did. When we started this band years ago we never imagined playing outside of Atlanta, so this has all been like a hallucination. We are all exhausted now and ready to be home. I would like to announce that the show we are playing at Primavera in Barcelona (I hope to god i spelled that right) will be our last for quite some time. It will also be the last time we are ever playing the Cryptograms set we have been playing for the last two years. After that the band are going on hiatus. We all need some time to organize our lives. Thanks to everyone who has helped us out. This has been a crazy year that I will always remember.
Love,
Bradford
P.S. we will still post stuff on here but probably not just as regularly and you can pretty much rest assured it will be solo stuff and not deerhunter, so if you are one of those people who are like, “why doesn’t bradford start his own blog”, delete your bookmark. deerhunter is sleeping now.
P.P.S. I miss my mom and dad making me go to church when i was a kid.
P.P.P.S. everyone should absolutley check out adam and greg’s amazing ambient new age blog.
**More Deerhunter News**
The guys just had a set posted on Daytrotter.com mostly full of songs that I am not familiar with except for Heatherwood off of the Flourescent Grey EP and Dr. Glass from Cryptograms. If you aren’t already familiar with Daytrotter, all of the tracks are available for free download right off that page.
Also… Below is some video coverage that Bradford did for MTV while at CMJ Music Marathon last month in NYC:
- Posted by David McLendon on November 21, 2007 at 11:29 am
- No Comments
