Atlanta Music Genome

I noticed this last week on Noot d’ Noot‘s blog and thought that it was very cool:

Jah Scorp has been working on an ATL Genome for some time now, and Mark from Quadiliacha has realized his vision with this fully interactive graph. See how it all ties together HERE.

Make sure to go to fullscreen mode, it’s much easier to use. It’s scope is a bit limited, but it also has way too many bands I had never heard of before. I did a little google research and found the blog of the person who made this genome. You should check it out. You can see an earlier version of the genome here.

I’m sure this isn’t a phenomenon unique to Atlanta, but we sure do have a ton of musicians who were in a ton of different bands with each other. It’s great to see someone putting all that data together. Right before Have You Heard stopped operating, Cj from A Fight To The Death had begun working on his own Atlanta music genome. He did a good podcast breaking down the family tree of The Goldest that you should listen to here. All of this makes me realize I need to have much more content digging into the history of Atlanta’s music scene, so I need to go do some research.

Corndogorama 2009: Saturday (Day 1)


All photos by Clint Miller

We got a later start yesterday than I would have liked and didn’t make it to Corndogorama until The Goldest began their set. I loved their EP, but in previous occasions thought their live show was a bit lacking. This time they sounded really good.

I got some lunch at the Australian Bakery, which has served as our Corndog home base for escaping the heat and grubbing, and then caught Sonen. Their set at last year’s corndog was lackluster, but this year it was not enjoyable at all. The vocals were very loud in the mix, and these two so called “vocalists” have no business singing. It was hard to even give the music underneath much of a chance with how bad the vocals were.

Next, Nomen Novum played one of the better live sets I’ve seen them do. They started out with some guitar loop build up songs and then moved to more electronic stuff near the end. While the duo churned out the tunes, they were joined by a dancer for this set who even contributed some neat sound effects using blades of grass.


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Photos: The Goldest, Cassavetes, Blastoids!, Chanticleer Fox (2/13/09) @ WonderRoot

Chanticleer Fox:

More Chanticleer Fox photos here

Blastoids:


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Live Videos: The Goldest, Sealions, Beige @ The Earl (1/15/09)

Beige:


Sealions:


The Goldest:

What Up In The ATL?

There isn’t a whole lot of big national acts coming through the A yet this year, but there are a ton of great local shows to check out and some interesting out-of-towners. The best shows in Atlanta January 12 – 18:

Tuesday:

Ghost to Falco, Recompas, Dan Hole Pond @ Eyedrum

Devil Worshiper, Thy Mighty Contract, Yukon, 4th Horse Men, So So Death, DJ Crackhouse @ Lenny’s

Hanna-Barbarian, Twin Thunder, Small Reactions @ WonderRoot

Thursday:

The Goldest, Sealions, Beige @ The Earl

The Sneaky Hand, Miles From Pangea, Beatrix Kiddo, Champagne Summer, Veris @ Lenny’s

Friday:

Longwave, Today The Moon, Tomorrow The Sun, It’s Elephants @ The Earl

Black Skies, Brass Castle, Overhead Ground @ Drunken Unicorn

The Mighty Hannibal, Noot D’ Noot @ Eyedrum

Saturday:

Baby Dinosaurs vs. Extinction, Can Can, Pegasi51 @ Drunken Unicorn

Anna Kramer & The Lost Cause @ 529


Ghost To Falco : Fourth
Thy Mighty Contract : Conjugal Freelance
The Goldest : Already Gone
Brass Castle : Bookworm Resin
Hanna-Barbarian : Terminus Exodus

The Top 15 Best Atlanta Albums Of 2008

It’s been a banner year for the Atlanta music scene. The international success of bands like Deerhunter, Black Lips, and Mastodon over the last couple of years has put a spotlight on our city and many other artists are beginning to reap the benefits. I still believe that too many of our best and brightest are being overlooked, but that’s exactly why I do what I do. Looking back at my favourite local albums from last year, it seems this year’s class of studio work runs substantially deeper. I felt our scene is so overpopulated by albums worthy of recognition that I extended my original top 10 to a top 15 and I’m still leaving off a ton of really good records from Inside The Perimeter.

A couple of notes, there are a few local albums that have been self-released over the holidays, but I’m rolling them into consideration for next year’s list, and one album on here technically came out in the holiday season of last year. I didn’t do write-ups for this list as many of these are going to make my top LP and top EP lists in a few days, but if you are unfamiliar with any of these acts, I urge you to click on the “tags” below to see all of our posts on the artist. I know someone is gonna complain about Bradford Cox being involved with 20% of this list, but the guy is kicking ass in both quality and quantity of work, so don’t be a player hater. Here is the best Atlanta music of 2008:


15. The Goldest : The Goldest

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14. Gringo Star : All Y’all

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13. Atlas Sound : Things I’ll Miss

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12. Today The Moon, Tomorrow The Sun :

The Lightning Exhibit

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11. No Face : You Mean So Much To Me

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10. Nomen Novum : Mantis Man 7″

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9. Parade : Ghosts

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8. The Liverhearts : Ornament

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7. Lid Emba & Bobcrane : We Substitute

Radiance

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6. All The Saints : Fire On Corridor X

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5. Dead Confederate : Wrecking Ball

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4. Atlas Sound : Let The Blind Lead Those

Who Can See But Cannot Feel

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3. This Piano Plays Itself : This Piano Plays

Itself

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2. Slushco : When I Met The Boss Of Nova

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1. Deerhunter : Microcastle/Weird Era Cont.

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Underground Hottlanta: The Goldest

While I cetainly have my preferences towards more progressive and experimental music, I still love some good, easily accessible pop music when it’s done right. An Atlanta supergroup called The Goldest, featuring musicians who have been with such illustrious groups as Dropsonic, Jupiter Watts, Long Knives, The Sudden Rays, 3D5spd and Envie to name just a few, recently released their debut EP. It contains 5 upbeat, sugary sweet jams that I have been absolutely loving. Another thing is the album sees a plethora of guest appearances from other ATL superstars, most notably Michelle DuBois (Luigi) and Tracy Clark (The Preakness). In Athens, you often see records featuring dozens of guest appearances from other local musicians, but you don’t see that so much in the Atlanta scene.

Anyways, give it a listen:

The Goldest: Already Gone

The Goldest: FMGold

For your reading pleasure, I did an interview with The Goldest‘s Justin Gray, Matthew Chenoweth, and Kevin Wallace via email:

Ohmpark: How did this project come about?

Justin Gray: Matt and I met at The Happenstance, an annual show at the Earl that throws musicians together that have never played before to write and perform 4 songs in the same day. I was already in a band (the Sudden Rays) with Kevin that was making a record at Southern Tracks, and that’s where we met. I had played previously in American Dream w/ Susannah. Lastly, Matt brought his former band mate Wilson on to round things out.

Matthew Chenoweth: Justin and I got paired up a couple of years ago at the Happenstance and it really clicked between us. He’s the perfect bass player in my opinion – solid lines, heavy grooves, musical approach. We ended up in Day Mars Ray together and that was a great way to find out we dug the same kind of music and wanted the same kinds of things from a band. The next step was jamming together on some song fragments we both had, and we left the rehearsal space completely juiced. Next was to land the perfect drummer – we both wanted Kevin (Justin already played with him in The Sudden Rays and I knew him from Jupiter Watts). Kevin sat in and was convinced after one jam session – we wrote a song in that session that eventually got recorded (not released yet). Next time we got together we wrote “We All Want More.” We seemed to click beautifully on the creative tip and almost every time someone started playing it turned into a song. We’d all done the rock trio thing and wanted a bigger sound so we kept writing and brainstorming on how to build what we thought would be the perfect band. Lots of vocals, etc. Next thing I knew Justin had booked us into Southern Tracks to cut ‘Fine’ (another spontaneous writing effort) and when Susannah came in to sing we knew we had another member – even if she was too busy, we’d wait. Didn’t take long. Sus was a full member by the time we recorded ‘Already Gone’ (she’d been on every track anyway). When we booked our first show we knew we needed a little more support in the band which came from Tom (the engineer who’d been recording us) and my friend Wilson (he and I had been in The Lord is My Shotgun together). Both great additions – Tom adding big full guitars and Wilson covering additional guitar parts in the recordings, along with vocals and keyboards. Voila! The Goldest.

JG: So that is the nuts and bolts but what really got us going was our 1st trip to southern tracks to record “fine”. We started recording in the 10am and left at 3am with a finished song—

something about moving so quickly yet being so fully immersed in just one song really got our attention. We knew that we had found a sound that was very, very special and unlike anything any of us had done before. Our sum was truly greater than our parts. That excitement, some good fights, and fumes got us through the next year and now here we are… loving what we’ve done, and optimistic about our future!

Ohmpark: Could you tell me a little bit about how the songwriting process works with the band?

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