SXSW Day 3 (Friday): School Of Seven Bands
All photos by Clint Miller
The three of us that embarked on this road trip a week ago have been hitting it hard everyday and after staying up until nearly dawn Thursday night, we had to catch up a little it on sleep. So unfortunately we almost completely missed Friday’s day parties. We did, though, make it to the Asthmatic Kitty showcase just in enough time to catch DM Stith. This day party was very much in the peripheral of the where the main SXSW action was, and there was only a small, comfortable crowd for this one. They played in a garage of some art center, and the vibe reminded me of WonderRoot. I have been listening to DM Stith‘s full-length, Heavy Ghost, like crazy for the last week so this was a show I was very excited about. The album seems to possess a lot of instrumentation and production tricks, so I was skeptical as to how good he could reproduce the songs live, but with a fairly minimalistic 3-piece setup, he played his stuff beautifully.
After that I walked around the area near that day party and checked out a few others nearby. I caught a little bit of The Mae Shi at some interesting venue that had an outdoor roller skating rink and while they were playing, the crowd surrounded them with a big parachute looking thing that the band played under. It was a cool scene, and I think I’m coming back to this venue for something again later today.
After that we headed to the Radio Room where our choice of showcase for the night. First up we caught Micah P. Hinson. I listened to one of his albums one the way to Texas and it was pretty cool. He seemed to have a ton of technical difficulties for this show, and while it didn’t really match up to what i heard of his studio work, I did enjoy the set. His clothing was a hodgepodge of clashing styles, and it paralleled his music. He would go from a Texas sort of country to loud noise jams at the drop of a hat.
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- Posted by Davy Minor on March 21, 2009 at 3:00 pm
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Photos & Videos: M83, School of Seven Bells @ The Earl in Atlanta, GA (11/11/08)
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- Posted by Clint Miller on January 14, 2009 at 12:47 am
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A Random Mp3 Trilogy (Crystal Antlers, School Of Seven Bells, Cut Copy)
It seems “Crystal” has become the new “Wolf” as far as band names go, but the one band of that namesake that you can’t afford to miss is Crystal Antlers. I have been simply blown away by their recent release, EP. The album is produced by The Mars Volta keyboardist Ikey Owens, and he does a stellar job making this total psych-freakout rock record sound amazing. This is one of the best short-length albums to come out all year, so do not miss it:
Crystal Antlers : A Thousand Eyes
The M83 show tonight is bolstered by a great opener in School Of Seven Bells. Their debut album, Alpinisms, presents a soft, accessible, dance-groove brand of shoegaze that I think anyone can enjoy. You might remember that Ben Curtis left the Secret Machines last year to concentrate fully on this project, and considering that I listened to the new SM album last night and was not impressed, I think he made the right decision.
School Of Seven Bells : Half Asleep
Finally, Cut Copy have announced a spring tour and will be at The Maquerade here in Atlanta March 26 with Matt & Kim. I have sort of overlooked these guys this year, but they’re newest album In Ghost Colours is really good, so if you haven’t taken a look into these Australian dance-punkers, it is time:
Buy In Ghost Colours: [MP3] [CD]
- Posted by Davy Minor on November 11, 2008 at 5:50 pm
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A Random MP3 Trilogy
After Deerhunter‘s Microcastle leaked, I only listened to it a few times and put it away. I rarely listen to advanced copies because I hate getting used to an album when it is not the final, finished product and I don’t want to be too tired of an album by the time I can suggest a link to buy it to you blog readers. But since I’m told that Microcastle is now available on itunes, I decided to start digging into it hard. Together with the Weird Era Cont companion album floating around on the interwebs, the two make for an epic triumph (Although I’ve been trying to save getting deep into Weird Era until it gets more fall/winter to get the full experience as intended). All weekend long at the beach house, we had a daily, serious Microcastle jam session. It was sort of like a religious experience.
It has been brought to my attention that we have been “kinda riding their jock a bit” lately, but I say we haven’t been riding their jock enough. Right now, not only is Deerhunter the best band in this city, but they may be this entire continent’s best band of the last two years as soon as this thing drops for real. You haters out there need to get on the bandwagon. My fav song from Microcastle:
Deerhunter : Micocastle : Nothing Ever Happened
These days I get a ton of promo emails to check out tracks or artists, and while I do my best to give them all a legitimate shot, often that isn’t the case. But persistence combined with great music is hard to ignore, and I finally started looking deep into the mp3s sent to me from an act called Immuzikation. Alfredo Lapuz Jr. is an Athens, Ga based musician who is involved with the acts Collective Efforts and Velveteen Pink, and most notably to me, does blog song mash-ups under the name Immuzikation. I’m a sucker for both a clever mash-up and savvy use of aggregators, and he is a master of both. Here’s a little something by him combining Santogold with Atlanta exile Treasure Fingers:
(BONUS: get a remix of a song by The Death Set from Treasure Fingers here)
And while we’re talking aggregators, I decided for the final track on this trilogy, I would go randomly grab the number one hottest track on elbows.ws and see if it was cool. It turned out to be a band I’ve never heard of from Brooklyn, Ny called School Of Seven Bells doing a song called “Conjur”. They are the newest project from Secret Machines‘ Benjamin Curtis. Their debut album, Alpinisms, is due out at the end of October. The song itself turned out to be pretty sweet and I’m looking forward to listening to their album. See, the blogosphere’s wonders never cease:
School Of Seven Bells : Conjur
- Posted by Davy Minor on September 4, 2008 at 4:01 am
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