Ohmpark Mixtape #21: The Dawn Of Summer

Young Again : “Skin The Arms”
Panda Bear : “Alsatian Darn”
Here We Go Magic : “Backwards Time”
Today The Moon, Tomorrow The Sun : “Old Monster”
tUnE-YarDs : “Bizness”
Mother Mother : “Simply Simple”
Feast Of Violet featuring Featureless Ghost : “Doomsday”
Beachtapes : “Santa Maria”
Places : “Sweet Melinda”
Dark Room : “Stutter”
Easily Suede : “Movie Night”
Radiohead : “Lotus Flower”
New Animal : “Out There”

Live Show: Panda Bear @ ATP NY (9/11/09)

panda

Panda Bear
All Tomorrow’s Parties New York
9/11/09

01 Chores
02 Song For Ariel
03 Ponytail
04 Untitled 1
05 Daily Routine
06 Bros
07 #1
08 I’m Not
09 Boneless (Notwist Remix)
10 Untitled 2

The Hottness Of A Generation: Animal Collective

Animal Collective have totally sold out on the disappointing Merriweather Post Pavilion. J/K LOL. It’s weird to have what very well could be the best record I listen to all year be the very first album of the year I listen to. It has tempered my expectations of every 2009 album I have approached thus far. It is almost impossible to find a bad review on this thing, and you’ll find no exception to that here. I doubt I’ll end up liking it as much as I love Sung Tongs, but it is pretty nearly perfect.

So instead of talking about the music on the album, as everyone else on the Internet has already done that, I’m going to talk more about the cultural relevance of Animal Collective. Hipster Runoff did a really long piece on this subject that you should read, and that site is the most consistently hilarious music blog on the planet, so you should really be reading that more often anyways.

Now it has taken me a fairly long time to fully appreciate AnCo and be completely on the bandwagon. I have always liked them, but I thought of them more as a weird anomaly than the influential wizards they appear to be now. I always try to approach hype with some skepticism, but Animal Collective is worthy of the infinite Internet popularity they now possess. Not only can pretty much everyone agree their new album is great, but there is an army of new acts that are heavily influenced by the Collective. I was really put off by so many people copycatting AC‘s sounds at first, but over time I’ve come to appreciate how many different directions you can take the aesthetic in. I mean, Animal Collective are changing the course of modern music all by themselves, in ways that seem only to be eclipsed by goliaths like The Beatles and Nirvana. In a post-blog/internet music world where there are billions of artists and opinions to compete against, their universality in that sphere is mindbogglingly impressive. But AC‘s overall cultural relevance is almost entirely limited to an elite crowd of people with Internet.

Most of this decade, one question I have pondered is, “Who is the biggest and best band to come out of the Oughts?” I believe there is a strong correlation between the old school music industry monolithic voice and the ability of a band to completely blow up into an icon that transcends mainstream and underground/alternative. The Internet has fundamentally changed how this works. People now have way more choices in both the diversity available and the sources to locate those varieties, making the target market for something universally appealing shrink. No longer can a few powerful people force the masses to listen to something because they lack other options to explore. The conventional machine of the music industry has been swiftly losing its influence for the greater part of this decade as people abandon the music fascism for a democratic Internet/blog music world. A great divide has evolved between these two worlds as this happens as well, creating a much more difficult obstacle to overcome in being able to achieve a transcendental popularity/authenticity cultural relevance a band like Radiohead now enjoys.

Click here to read the entire post…

Monday Mash-Up

One of the dudes from the Black Lips recently shut down a big Atlanta Magazine photo shoot with a fire extinguisher. Typical.

Pitchfork interviews Bradford Cox (Atlas Sound/Deerhunter). Also typical.

Atlanta’s Attractive Eighties Women have a live album out this week:

AEW sound ’80s hardrock like their name would denote, but with really funny lyrics full of Atlanta references. Check it out:

They Shoot Hipsters, Don’t They

Pandamonium

Click here to read the entire post…

Ohmpark’s Top 50 Best Albums Of 2007

2007 was an incredible year of music and there were so many albums I really liked that didn’t make this list. I noticed that most of the lists I pay attention to were very similar to one another this year as opposed to last year. Also, I’ve found myself in more of a disagreeance with those lists than last year. If there is any theme to be taken out of this list, I think it’s that I feel like too many great albums were underrated by the blogosphere elites, and that they were way in love with some albums I think are overrated. This list represents my personal assertions more so than the rest of the Ohmpark crew, but I worked hard to get every one’s opinions and influences in this thing. Feel free to comment on how much you hate or love it. I feel like every album on this is an essential one from last year, so go listen to some new music:

Click here to read the entire post…

Monday Mash-Up

Kid Rock got arrested Saturday night after his show here in Atlanta at a Dekalb Waffle House for beating up a customer.

Japanese metal experimentalists Boris will be doing a free in-store performance at Criminal Records at 4pm today, and then playing at The Earl tonight. I highly recommend checking them out.

Boris : Pink : Farewell
Atlas Sound (Bradford Cox of Deerhunter‘s solo project) has released a tracklist of the new album due out next year.

Mike Patton will be the voice of Bionic Commando in a video game.

Dinosaur Jr will be in Athens, Ga at The 40 Watt on December 3rd.

Death Cab For Cutie‘s Ben Walla got jacked by US Homeland Security. They confiscated a hard drive he had been using to work on his upcoming solo album.

Band Of Horses had a line-up change.

The Selmanaires and Anna Kramer each have a new album coming out early next year.

Watch the Panda Bear unreleased DVD People Party:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Interview:

Queens Of The Stone Age on Letterman:

Klaxons on Conan:

Here’s Tori Amos on Craig Ferguson:

Arsis has finished up their new album due out next year. They will be playing with Enslaved and Atlanta’s From Exile on November 2nd at the Masquerade:

You can download an mp3 of Diplo remixing Black Lips “Veni Vidi Vici” here.

While I was at Echo Project, I saw a bunch of flyers for a 99x show with Modest Mouse, Silverchair, and Silversun Pickups on December 16th, but I can find no existence of this on the internets.

Mute Math on Conan:

Humpday Random Tracks

Here’s some tracks floating around the blogs this week to listen to and preview. Click the album cover to find more info on the album and how to purchase it:

Low: “Breaker”

Andrew Bird: “Heretics”

Panda Bear: “Take Pills”

The National: “Fake Empire”

El-P: “flyentology (cassettes won’t listen remix)”