Hometapes

The cover of Big Inner rests like a family photograph on my...

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 11:52:00 -0700

The cover of Big Inner rests like a family photograph on my desk. I can’t even count the times I’ve walked into it — peeking behind the chair, running my hands across the leaves of the tree, getting up close to Dr. John and King Tubby on some odd chance I’d hear them say something back to me. And Matt’s still sitting there, frozen but still breathing, as his songs play and bounce like memories off the infinite walls of that white space. It’s a portal, one I’ve left open for over a year. Or maybe it left me open.

When Travis Robertson, the wizard behind the colorful constructed world of Big Inner, wanted to reveal what’s beyond the edges of that cover scene, I shook all over. I’d be the first recruit in line, I’d take that one-way ticket, I’d find my way back and tell the world what I saw. When I went to Richmond to help with the production of the music video for “Steady Pace,” I was transported to the jungle of my dreams. We’d edit all day, then I’d go home to the Spacebomb attic and sleep next to Moondog (his cameo is at 1:40).

The thing about Big Inner: it is a place. Matthew E. White takes you there. Travis Robertson takes you there. And, “Steady Pace,” with its groove and its lyrical affirmation of the flexibility of time, will have you dancing through that door before you know it. What will you see when you’re inside? How long will you want to stay? Well. We’ve got you warmed up. The rest is up to you.

Matthew E. White “Steady Pace” (Official Video)

Director: Travis Robertson
Art Director: Travis Robertson
Director of Photography: Joey Tran
Editor: Joey Tran
Creative Director: Sara Padgett Heathcott
Producer: Spacebomb

A Lone Sound Mixtape: a new All Tiny Creatures single and a...

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 12:32:39 -0700

A Lone Sound Mixtape: a new All Tiny Creatures single and a scenic route just off the superhighway to the new album, Dark Clock

“new musical species are crafted through ATC’s ways of alchemistic discoveries that are both bright, dark, big, small, beautiful, fearsome, transitional and alive.” -Impose Magazine

STREAM/DOWNLOAD: All Tiny Creatures A Lone Sound Mixtape

Building on a tradition begun with Harbors and its adjacent mixtapes for “An Iris” and “Glass Bubbles,” today All Tiny Creatures unveiled their first longform audio exploration of their upcoming album Dark Clock (out June 25 on Hometapes). A Lone Sound Mixtape begins with the album track of the same name, a pulsing jam that’s unstuck in time. The rest of the mixtape answers the question: what if that feeling could keep going? “Hypertext” and “Wireframe” let you hover in it for a little longer — and it’s in those tracks you’ll hear the non-verbal commentary track for the album. Beau Sorenson’s bookending remix of “Glass Bubbles” (from previous album Harbors) reminds you that electricity is a very willing accomplice to dancing. Click and move:

All Tiny Creatures: A Lone Sound Mixtape

1. A Lone Sound
2. Hypertext (Extended Mix)
3. Wireframe
4. Glass Bubbles (Beaunoise Remix)

A journey from place to place: Lyndsey Lee Denyer’s...

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 10:34:00 -0700

A journey from place to place: Lyndsey Lee Denyer’s Peregrination

Step into the Hometapes house and it’s quickly evident that records are merely one color in the wide spectrum of creation that takes place under our roof. Over the past five years, Lyndsey Lee Denyer has been our resident rainbow machine, her hands deep in everything from numbers to screen print ink. Even when it’s quiet, she hears the music in her head.

Today, we’re proud to share the news of Peregrination, Lyndsey’s solo show at Sohitek Gallery in Portland, OR. It opens tonight. “The idea behind Peregrination was to wholly commit myself to the practice of making, and to be less concerned with the final product,” said Lyndsey in a recent interview/preview for the show. We know that feel.

In addition to a room sparkling-full of Lyndsey’s collage work, she and her partner (and Hometapes family, too) Marc Faulkner will be releasing a new issue of their collaborative zine project. It’s called “You Relax” — and Lyndsey knows better than most that we’ll follow that direction…wherever it takes us.

PEREGRINATION
Collage ramblings by Lyndsey Lee Denyer
Sohitek Gallery, April 4th, 6-10PM
625 NW Everett St. #102
Portland, OR 97209

We’re still inventing fire: All Tiny Creatures...

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 08:38:00 -0800

We’re still inventing fire: All Tiny Creatures announce Dark Clock, out May 28, and release first single.

MP3: All Tiny Creatures “Quickest Cut”
Check out the premiere on Paste.

“Dude, look what I just got.” It started with a text. All Tiny Creatures’ founder Thomas Wincek was at work on the new album. He’d just found a Rockman, the headphone amplifier designed by Boston founder Tom Scholz. Basically a guitar DI Box with multiple effects built in, this is what Def Leppard used all over Hysteria. I had no idea. For those vast radio jams of my youth, my brain had been the effects processor. You hear a sound and you make a decision about where it comes from. When I started listening to All Tiny Creatures, it was always a multiple choice question — and the answer was somewhere between a machine and a memory.

A couple months later, I was listening to Drexciya and watching King Crimson live videos. I was hearing Beach Boys songs I never knew existed. Wincek was curating my lunch breaks, and, simultaneously, scattering the breadcrumbs so I could find my way forward. Like leaving a note for yourself before you time travel, I was learning the secrets of Dark Clock. All Tiny Creatures’ second album is an ode to the intertwined bodies of music and technology. A familiar, primordial ease is wrapped up in pulsing electricity. In ten songs, the Wisconsin-based four-piece reminds us that our blood-filled frames are responsible for making the tangle of wires around us. We’re still inventing fire.

“This is like pop music from an alternate universe,” wrote Wincek. Cut to “Comets,” the album’s first song and its undeniable sense of transportation. Conceived quickly after their 2011 debut Harbors, “Comets” first appeared on a mixtape built around the song “An Iris,” a highlight of their first album featuring Justin Vernon on vocals. Over the next few months, “Comets” became a staple of All Tiny Creatures’ live set, evolving in real time. That first sound you hear on Dark Clock has traveled a long way. Like the ancient light from a star, it can give you that primitive tingle while flooding your brain with visions of the future.

All Tiny Creatures is Wincek, along with Andrew Fitzpatrick, Matt Skemp, and Ben Derickson. Between their triangle of homes in Madison, Milwaukee, and Fond du Lac, they are key players in both the lineage of and the current vibe zeitgeist in Wisconsin music. Wincek, Skemp, and Fitzpatrick are also part of Volcano Choir, the sonic collision between Justin Vernon and the venerable Collections of Colonies of Bees. Longtime friends, the process of creating Dark Clock was its own song for the band. First conceived by Wincek nearly seven years ago, First conceived by Wincek nearly seven years ago, All Tiny Creatures runs on the fuel of exploration and experimentation, as well as on high sonic standards. From sampling computer-speech pioneer Charles Dodge on “The Book” to inviting Julian Lynch to play clarinet on “Reunion” to pretending to be another band entirely on “A Lone Sound,” (“We tried to imagine what it must have been like writing music using primarily a Fairlight CMS, one of the earliest, most primitive samplers”), Dark Clock is as conceptually vast as it is viscerally immediate.

When I heard “Quickest Cut,” I realized where Wincek had taken me. He took the blindfold off at the top of the ferris wheel, right when the guitar solo kicked in. The land that stretched out around us was lush and green, marked with glass skyscrapers and grazed by woolly mammoths. It was as endless endless as the improvised guitar loop the song was built on. I understood it now, the road we took in, lined with telephone poles and aluminum fences. I could see where it started, in those woods. I could see where it ended, in those woods. Dark Clock, like everything I’ve ever heard All Tiny Creatures create, is a neurotransmitter. From the click of a keyboard to the click of a breaking stick, it connects the dots between where we are and where we came from. You just dial in where you want to land, hold on, and let go.

-Sara Padgett Heathcott, Hometapes

All Tiny Creatures Dark Clock
Hometapes 059 - LP/CD/DIG
Release Date: May 28, 2013

01. Comets
02. A Lone Sound
03. Hypertext
04. All Die Out
05. Impossible Season
06. Quickest Cut
07. The Book
08. Chase Lights
09. Wave Particles
10. Reunion

You guys. It’s Friend Island time again. We’re...

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 11:11:00 -0800

You guys. It’s Friend Island time again. We’re headed to Austin, with all our portable dreams, to host the finest Friend Island SXSW has ever seen. Seven years in, this is Hometapes all aglow. Check out all the details below, including a special Soundcloud playlist highlighting all the bands, and be sure to RSVP and bring your friends.

{{{ FRIEND ISLAND }}}
The SXSW oasis presented by Hometapes and friends.

Saturday March 16
12pm til 12am | FREE (no SXSW cred needed)
@ The Museum of Human Achievement | Austin, TX

RSVP for address and more info: bit.ly/friendisland2013
A sonic invitation: bit.ly/friendisland2013music
Stare into the middle: bit.ly/friendisland2013flyer

12:00 - DJs Bear In Heaven and Sunless
01:00 - Jason Ajemian
02:00 - Akron/Family
03:00 - Helado Negro
04:00 - All Tiny Creatures
05:00 - Matthew E. White
06:00 - Snow Panda and Scott Clark
07:00 - JD Emmanuel
08:00 - Sinkane
09:00 - Leverage Models
10:00 - killer BOB
11:00 - Zorch

Plus treats in Friend Island tradition: free beer, Pop Tarts, nachos, endless endless Topo Chico, and The Hometapes Portable Record Store

Presented by Hometapes
In sweat with…
Spacebomb and The Museum of Human Achievement

Leverage Models are making moves again. Some great press love...

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 11:04:16 -0800

Leverage Models are making moves again. Some great press love this week from The Deli NYC and Dingus. Here’s a choice selection from The Deli:

“Leverage Models are mixing business with pleasure. Pulling from the colorful bullsh*t of popular industry, they’ve given new meaning to the bland business of deliverables and accounting in ready-made dance classics like the undeniable ‘Sweep’ (streaming below) off latest EP ‘Cooperative Extensions.’ This is world beats turned into booty-shaking dirtiness, topped off with Shannon Fields’ roof-shaking falsetto. It’s the kind of band worth doing business with.”

Leverage Models have two NYC-area shows coming up; the live show should not be missed:

Jan 31st at Cameo, Brooklyn, NY
Tickets: http://www.cameony.net/event/209207-rumors-brooklyn/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/517564121608528/?fref=ts

Feb 11th at Glasslands, Brooklyn, NY
Tickets: http://ticketf.ly/UNGQbW
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/events/560851000608964/

Make sure to follow Leverage Models on Soundcloud…cool things on the way very soon!

I have great desire. My desire Is great. Matthew E. White in...

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 09:50:00 -0800

I have great desire. My desire Is great.
Matthew E. White in Europe, on record and tonight.

“Strings and horns dance around in the subtle, sometimes funky background, while White’s song’s burst with Cosmic American ambition, referencing everything from Otis Redding to Gene Clark’s No Other. Yep. That good. A genuine classic in fact.” The Independent

There’s a riot going on. Matthew E. White, whose still-vibrating Big Inner came out yesterday in the UK on Domino, landed on British soil yesterday to massive press and radio applause. Today, across the road from the ocean in Brighton, I’m listening to him sing Randy Newman’s “I’ll Be Home”…and realizing perhaps we already are.

1/22/13 - Brighton, England @ Audio
1/23/13 - London, England @ The Lexington
1/25/13 - London, England @ Rough Trade East
1/27/13 - Dublin, Ireland @ Whelan’s
1/29/13 - Geneva, Switzerland @ Antigel Festival

“One of the great albums of modern Americana and one suspects that a reluctant star is born” 9/10 Uncut Album of the Month

‘White has sewn together a psychedelic patchwork from various indigenous sounds – cosmic soul and funk, morning-after blues – that’s as great as any of its obvious influences… cosmically knowing but with nifty footwork” 4/5 Q

I can’t tell if I’m unraveling or multiplying into a...

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 16:07:45 -0800

I can’t tell if I’m unraveling or multiplying into a technicolor blanket to cover us all.
This year.
I didn’t hear you the first time.
Star Over.

DOWNLOAD: Star Over, a Hometapes holiday album
FREE with the option to DONATE any amount to Smallwater and their efforts to rebuild the Rockaway, NY community in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy.

Thirty-five tracks that travel through time, space, and the past few years of Hometapes holiday albums, Star Over is the music we’re listening to as we close our eyes, grab your hand, and step off the cliff edge of 2012. Juxtaposed in new ways — and including brand new additions by Chris Rosenau (also of Collections of Colonies of Bees & Volcano Choir), The Caribbean (a collaboration with Insect Factory), Keith Sunset (also of CYNE), and Sunless (Hometapes’ own Adam Heathcott) — these songs are the recipe for the sunrise and sunset of the hardest and best year of our lives.

It’s alright, the rumble in your ears: All Tiny Creatures...

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 14:10:00 -0800

It’s alright, the rumble in your ears:
All Tiny Creatures cover A.C. Marias and King Crimson.

STREAM/DOWNLOAD: All Tiny Creatures “Just Talk | Sleepless”

When you slide a record back into its jacket, when you clutch and push the spine and place it back on the shelf, it all goes quiet. It all goes back into that resting state of potential energy. You can run your hand over it and remember. You can forget it for months and it doesn’t whimper. It waits.

All Tiny Creatures’ album Harbors is the boss of the record shelf. That spine, those thick letters — it set up house there in 2011, maybe with a little bit of that new-kid-in-town debut album swagger. Listen to “An Iris” to remember your first time. And remember, as side D of that double LP twists down to that last breath groove, All Tiny Creatures is just waking up, somewhere in Wisconsin.

Thomas Wincek, Andrew Fitzpatrick, Matt Skemp, and Ben Derickson have been building on the undulating earth that Harbors dug down into.
They’ve been making a new record.
On tour earlier this year with Bon Iver, they were already evolving in real time. Flashing lights shook the crowd into just the right place: somewhere between the past and the present. It just sounded like the future.

Today, that expansion has been bottled. A study of two old songs displays the archaeology of everything to come. Described in detail by Wincek (in words you can read as you hit play), All Tiny Creatures pulls back the curtain to reveal another curtain — woven from their influences, their process, and their hope to connect the dots.

So walk up to that backlit map, find where it says “you are here” and decide which way you want to go next. These twelve minutes of new-old material from the band I’ve described as “the music my brain would make” might just guide you in the absence of a clear answer.

Landmarks to visit along the way:
All Tiny Creatures Official Website
All Tiny Creatures Tumblr
All Tiny Creatures on Soundcloud
All Tiny Creatures on Twitter
All Tiny Creatures on Facebook

Matthew E. White and the fourth dimension.We’re always...

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 11:09:14 -0800

Matthew E. White and the fourth dimension.
We’re always moving, but today we’re holding still. If just for four-and-a-half minutes.

We joyously declare:

» The premiere of the video for Matthew E. White “Will You Love Me.” We made it ourselves: Kamp Grizzly/Merchants of Def, Hometapes, and Spacebomb. Pitchfork unveiled it today.

» The beginning of the second leg of Matthew E. White’s tour with The Mountain Goats, kicking off in Atlanta today and taking the band westward over the next three weeks.

» The expanded worldwide release of Big Inner by none other than Domino. Spacebomb and Hometapes have multiplied.

» The announcement of the first European tour dates for Matthew E. White in 2013. It feels good to look across the ocean.

01/22/13 - Brighton, UK @ The Hope
01/23/13 - London, UK @ Lexington
01/27/13 - Dublin, Ireland @ Whelans

For now, Matthew and the band look down the pine-lined corridor of I-85.
The sun’s moving fast, as autumn is the season of the night.
Switch the amp on.
Run your fingers down the keys.
Think about how that drum will sound, just before you hit it.
Put the strap over your shoulder.
Take a breath.
And
And

_______

Go on the road with Matthew E. White via Instagram: #biginner

»» Jon Mueller : Death Blues «« Step...

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 07:42:53 -0800

»» Jon Mueller : Death Blues ««

Step One: The Manifesto.
Death Blues: The Celebration and Opportunity of Each Moment by Jon Mueller. Read and download exclusively from Change This.

Step Two: The Album
Stream & Download Jon Mueller Death Blues now from Hometapes.
Vinyl LP out in January on Hometapes and Taiga Records.
Find Yourself. Impatience. Death Blues. Acceptance. Impermanence. Iron String

Step Three: You
I’ll go first.

I’m wrangling the notion that everything I touch is Death Blues.
There’s a calendar to Death Blues, to you and me, to the light wrapping around everything.
As we recognize it, it disintegrates, it defines itself anew, it proves itself wrong.
We prove ourselves right, we prove ourselves here, and the person sitting across from us, the churning crowd in a room.

Death Blues is the soundtrack to the sweet and sure knowledge that you are alone.

You are the door-opener, the door-slammer. You uncurl your wires and let them touch or not touch.
Death Blues is that electricity that wakes you up, that keeps you up, that whispers you to sleep; it’s just recharging.
I’d like to show that electricity.
Step one is losing that pressure, or pushing back, letting the transaction itself manufacture the spark to fire up what we need.

Death Blues came in flashes:
A coffee shop in Minneapolis. An apartment hallway.
Examining yourself in the bathroom mirror.
Speaking at dinner with command and an eye on the sunset.
On the road, land sliding by and winking because it knows you might not pass through again anytime soon.

It’s every time I come home.
It’s all the phone calls until they stopped.
It’s the stopping until it started moving again.
It’s grass up to my ankles in Texas.
It’s the red vinyl of a dark club, sinking into it and my phone glows in my hand.
It’s headlights on grass and siding and a quiet Moon Tower.
Too big for me to have never noticed.

How often we don’t look up.
How often we forget to breathe, but don’t.
Just shallow, just to get us by.
Have my days been like shallow breaths?
There’s no way, look at what I’ve made.
Look at who might testify. Look at these piles and hear the sounds.
I’ve gathered every bit of energy around us in the desert, and I’ve filtered it through myself.
Whatever it caught along the way is the me in all this.
And it’s become my language and definition.

Is it a march to an end, is that end Death, or is Death just an every day thing,
Every day dies as it passes.
Death of the possibilities of a minute.
These days just flex in and out of each other
And your chance is infinite
You’re always dying and living,
and the Blues are wrapped up in both.

The most joyous and true music is wrapped up in the ceremony of death.

Maybe it rests in beauty,
in the gold edging, in the curve of a letter, in the way your hand feels gliding across the paper.
It may be in a mingling of the minimal and the crowded,
I’m trying to get at what I like to rest in. Is it an empty table or an overflowing one. Does it matter you don’t have anywhere to sit your plate or your book or your computer
If the table is full of everything you need already.

Death Blues is the path to any decision, from getting up from your chair to picking up the phone, to opening a new text file and thinking into it.
Music is so perfectly simple. It says everything.
I don’t want to get in the way of what people will naturally understand.
But to get them there in the first place,
To take it beyond the inner circle to the area of strangers, to the area of effect.
Is that very effort a stalling force?
If we just try, is that enough?
If we don’t try, will we do it by accident?
Can you outline Death Blues?
Can you put a date on it?
Can you attribute assets to it?
Can you sell it?
Can you play Death Blues on the radio?
I think we do every day.
I’m wrangling the notion that everything I touch is Death Blues.

Death Blues comes alive this Friday and Saturday in Milwaukee, WI.
Alverno Presents: Jon Mueller/Death Blues (No Time Like The Present)

I’ve started this post maybe six times.I’m trying to...

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 11:46:47 -0800

I’ve started this post maybe six times.
I’m trying to talk about the noise.

The noise in the life of a musician, the load-in and the load-out of creation.
What it takes to get to that pure, ecstatic moment that only music can spark.
Only music.
It’s the laid-out-bare condition that keeps us, some of us, walking into venues, holding records, clicking links.
There’s a reason we’re here.
There’s a reason we carry this metaphorical 4x12 guitar cabinet up a flight of stairs that we can’t see the end of.
There’s a reason we breathe in everything, the noise, for 23 hours a day, simply for that hour-long exhale from 10pm to 11pm on a Tuesday night.
It’s music.
We can write about it and talk about it.
And I do, it’s all I want to do sometimes.
But I can’t quite ever share that elastic swirl, that otherworldly drip of pure shimmering stuff that music is synonymous with.
That moment is each of ours alone, amplified by everyone feeling their version of the same thing, all around us.
From the record to the club, goddamn it’s easy to share.
If you can find a parking place
or the money to pay your bills.

Sometimes the noise drowns out the song.
Sometimes the noise is the song.

Ape School, today, this is all your fault. Today, you say it all.
“Be An Encore” on repeat.

DOWNLOAD:
Ape School: the Insound/Fred Perry Artist Lounge Sessions
Featuring “Be An Encore” and “Bone Dry”

Click here to learn more about the sessions, recorded during CMJ last month by Grammy winning engineer Geoff Sanoff (Nada Surf, Secret Machines, School of Seven Bells), as well as all the other bands and friendly sponsors involved.

And we’re pleased to announce that Ape School and Hometapes family The Caribbean will be playing a show in Philly next month at Kung Fu Necktie. Grab tickets for the December 15 event right here.

And while we’re in the family way, check this out:
Ape School “Be An Encore (CYNE Remix)”

Photo: Ape School at Glasslands, Brooklyn, NY, 8/21/12. By Hometapes.

It might be fun, we might not hit bottom. We might fly to the...

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 15:11:09 -0700

It might be fun, we might not hit bottom. We might fly to the other side of this strange dimension. Will you let us do it? Will you join us?
Bear In Heaven: New Mixtape, Tour Starts Tomorrow

There’s a deep, magmatic archaeology beneath the feet of Bear In Heaven. The sounds that seeded the windswept field of Red Bloom of the Boom, that lit a torch in the dripping primordial cave of Beast Rest Forth Mouth, and that whisper you into an all-out shake as you spin I Love You, It’s Cool — those sounds are still here. In fact, they’re right here.

Today, Bear In Heaven released an exclusive mixtape on FADER, and, in a few songs, reveal their loves, old and new. The track list:

Cex – Enter Carter
Kyoka – Hadue
Factory Floor – Lying
Andrew Pekler – Misty Blue
Craig Leon – Donkeys
Alpha Wave Movement – Beacon 2
Oblio – Factory Of Reincarnation
Invisible Conga People – Cant Feel My Knees
Andrew Fitzpatrick – Coyote Prism
Bear In Heaven – Kiss Me Crazy (Certain Creatures Remix)
Diamond Age – Opening Credits
Bear In Heaven – Greece Sun
Harold Budd – Wanderer

Among the collection is a never-before-heard Bear In Heaven piece titled “Greece Sun” and a new remix of “Kiss Me Crazy” by Certain Creatures (a.k.a. Oliver Chapoy, a friend as old as the band itself). And, yeah, that’s Andrew Fitzpatrick from All Tiny Creatures.

Bear In Heaven hit the road again tomorrow, weaving down the eastern US to Moogfest and back up for a big hometown show in Brooklyn…right before hopping across the ocean to reinforce the sonic architecture of The National-curated All Tomorrow’s Parties in the UK. Hell yes. Dates below.

10.24 – Johnny Brenda’s – Philadelphia, PA * !
10.25 – College of William And Mary – Williamsburg, VA *
10.26 – Moogfest – Asheville, NC #
10.27 – MOTR Pub – Cincinnati, OH *
10.28 – Brillobox – Pittsburgh, PA *
10.29 – Black Cat Backstage – Washington, DC *
12.05 – Music Hall of Williamsburg – New York, NY * $
12.07-12.09 – All Tomorrow’s Parties – Camber Sands Holiday Camp, UK

* with ERAAS
! with Pink Skull
# with Miike Snow, Squarepusher, Explosions In The Sky
$ with Small Black

Web music OGs, Epitonic recorded a saki Session for Leverage...

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 11:37:11 -0700

Web music OGs, Epitonic recorded a saki Session for Leverage Models during their most recent tour around the US. The ‘Models played six tracks covering ground from all three EPs. While you’ve really gotta see ‘em live to get the full effect of the megaphone and roto-tom set up, this great-sounding performance will be a fine substitute until they hit road again. Check it out here. Also: dance.

Leverage Models took the stage at saki with an array of pre-recorded backing instruments laying a foundation of reverbed-out synths and drums, garnished with the occasional meandering saxophone line. The backing band took hold of each track with wild flourishes of roto-toms, guitars drenched with chorus, and driving bass. Meanwhile, Fields was a dynamo, stalking and dancing around our intimate setting with an arsenal of percussion and delivering a vocal performance, often through a megaphone, mirroring each song performed from his EPs. All of which made for a fun afternoon, and a set of recordings to inspire teasing your hair up with a can of hair spray, donning that skinny keyboard tie, and dancing the night away.

«Side note: It’s always nice to see folks from our distant past still fighting the good fight. Justin Sinkovich of Epitonic was a member of Thumbnail way back when we were in junior high. I can remember sitting on Sara’s floor and listening to their self-titled album over and over. The beautiful album artwork and packaging most certainly planted one of the earliest seeds into our proto-Hometapes brains. Cross-country high-five. Thanks, Justin/Epitonic.»

Your eyes, your eyesAU has a new video for “Solid...

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 15:36:00 -0700

Your eyes, your eyes
AU has a new video for “Solid Gold” + announces tour with Zammuto

WATCH (Stereogum Premiere): AU “Solid Gold” (Directed by Roberto Ortu)

AU’s album Both Lights summoned summer. Their live shows went on to cauterize the energy of the season — Luke Wyland, Dana Valatka, and the new (now permanent) addition of Holland Andrews transforming their tools (instruments, devices, voices) into exquisite and urgent performances. Every note is like a last chance. Every note is like the first word in a story that never, ever ends.

Let’s move into Fall. You can look in the mirror. Pick up the Both Lights album and do just that — beyond the swimming cross-section of ancient agate stone is the fact that the album cover, printed on metallic board, simply reflects your face. Your face and everything around you. If the music doesn’t turn your experience of sound back around on you, your brain, and your heart — then the record packaging itself will ease you along. Like magic.

Director Roberto Ortu reached out to AU with a mirror in mind, and created a visual accompaniment to the song “Solid Gold” that rides the dreamlike wave of brotherhood and the reflection of ourselves that we see in others. Adding to the narrative AU started (inviting the powerful and kind Colin Stetson to play saxophone on the song), and to narrative we continued (with the striking Solid Gold 7” record), Roberto’s video fits right into the world of Both Lights.

After an artist residency program in Iowa and its culminating performance on October 26, AU hits the road with Zammuto. Dates below — and complete, updated AU show listings always available right here.

10/01/12 - 10/25/12 - Fairfield, IA @ The Beauty Shop #
10/26/12 - Fairfield, IA @ The Beauty Shop
10/27/12 - Wichita, KS @ Rock Island Live
10/28/12 - Santa Fe, NM @ O’Shaughnessy Performance Space
10/29/12 - Phoenix, AZ @ Crescent Ballroom *
10/30/12 - San Diego, CA @Soda Bar *
10/31/12 - Santa Barbara, CA @ Muddy Waters *
11/01/12 - Los Angeles, CA @ Troubadour *
11/02/12 - Santa Cruz, CA @ Crepe Place *
11/03/12 - San Francisco, CA @ The Independent *
11/05/12 - Portland, OR @ Doug Fir Lounge *
11/06/12 - Seattle, WA @ Barboza *
11/07/12 - Vancouver, WA @ Biltmore Cabaret *

# Luke Wyland Solo Residency
* w/ Zammuto

And while you are here..

DOWNLOAD: AU “Solid Gold”
DOWNLOAD: AU “Solid Gold (Deerhoof Remix)”

Praise for Both Lights:

“Every track brims with exuberant life. His (Luke Wyland) first masterpiece.” (8/10) - NME

Prismatic, kaleidoscopic, and oversaturated with color, it endlessly resituates itself between towering chamber-folk, cyclonic Marnie Stern-style spazz, and orchestral psych. - Pitchfork

“It’s a tight 40 minutes of compacted, runaway virtuosity.” - BBC

BUY: AU Both Lights LP/CD
BUY: AU Solid Gold 7”

Child, we ain’t from this world: SPIN premieres Matthew E....

Mon, 01 Oct 2012 10:40:15 -0700

Child, we ain’t from this world: SPIN premieres Matthew E. White “Brazos”
The climactic live video from Matthew E. White’s Hopscotch Music Festival performance

“‘Brazos’ is the kind of clip that speaks for itself…Matthew E. White, if you don’t know, is a Richmond, Virginia-bred singer-songwriter with a real John Lennon vibe going, both in terms of his ambition and his rolling, psychedelic soul music. White is joined by 30 musicians in this live rendition of his new Big Inner LP’s 11-minute closer…Righteous.” -SPIN

WATCH at SPIN:
Matthew E. White “Brazos” Live at Hopscotch Music Festival 2012

Presented by Spacebomb and Hometapes.

Special thanks to Kamp Grizzly.
Director: Hometapes
Camera: Anthony Forgey, Yogi Hakim, Adam Heathcott, xTonyx Wallace
Editor: xTonyx Wallace

DOWNLOAD/STREAM: Matthew E. White “One Incantation Under God”
The entire Hopscotch performance was recorded by NYC Taper. You can take it with you.

TOUR DATES: Matthew E. White heads out on the road with The Mountain Goats in one week. Click here for the complete date list.

matthewewhite: More tour dates announced! To The South, where...

Mon, 24 Sep 2012 11:22:38 -0700

matthewewhite:

More tour dates announced! To The South, where my people are from. To The Southwest, the Land of Enchantment, and to The West, the destination of idyllic mid-century westward expansion and refuge for 20th century composers exiled from European totalitarianism.

Here’s the full list of Matthew E. White dates, including the nationwide tour with The Mountain Goats — and a few special engagements…

Matthew E. White Tour Dates

10/09/12 - Richmond, VA @ The National *
10/10/12 - Baltimore, MD @ The Ottobar *
10/11/12 - Philadelphia, PA @ Theatre of Living Arts *
10/12/12 - Hudson, NY @ Helsinki Hudson
10/13/12 - Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg *
10/14/12 - Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg *
10/15/12 - New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom *
10/16/12 - New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom *
10/18/12 - Boston, MA @ House of Blues *
10/19/12 - Ithaca, NY @ The Haunt *
10/20/12 - Toronto, ON @ Phoenix Concert Theatre *
10/21/12 - Guelph, ON @ E-Bar
10/22/12 - Grand Rapids, MI @ The Ladies Literary Club *
10/23/12 - Milwaukee, WI @ Pabst Theater *
10/24/12 - Minneapolis, MN @ Varsity Theater *
10/26/12 - Iowa City, IA @ The Blue Moose Taphouse *
10/27/12 - Chicago, IL @ Vic Theatre *
11/17/12 - Saxapahaw, NC @Haw River Ballroom #
11/29/12 - Atlanta, GA @ Terminal West *
11/30/12 - Asheville, TN @ Grey Eagle *
12/01/12 - Nashville, TN @ Mercy Lounge *
12/03/12 - Tulsa, OK @ Cain’s Ballroom *
12/04/12 - Dallas, TX @ Granada Theater *
12/05/12 - Austin, TX @ Emo’s East *
12/07/12 - Santa Fe, NM @ Santa Fe Brewing Co. *
12/08/12 - Phoenix, AZ @ Crecent Ballroom *
12/09/12 - Tucson, AZ @ Club Congress *
12/10/12 - San Diego, CA @ Irenic *
12/13/12 - Los Angeles, CA @ The Troubador *
12/14/12 - San Francisco, CA @ The Fillmore *
12/16/12 - Portland, OR @ The Aladdin Theater *
12/17/12 - Seattle, WA @ The Showbox Theater *

* w/ The Mountain Goats
# w/ Midtown Dickens

Whenever I travel, always in some wild Hometapes spirit, the...

Fri, 21 Sep 2012 11:27:00 -0700

Whenever I travel, always in some wild Hometapes spirit, the relief map of my life experiences a frantic uplift of mountain ranges, a swift, time-defying formation of valleys, and new, deep rivers rushing down through it all.

From that first embrace in that faraway place, to the shuffle of dozens of feet onto a stage, to the music, oh the music. Emails drift into hills as I grip the steering wheel, the computer in my pocket hums with voices and pictures pile up like road signs. You learn to remember as you live, to think and speak and write and hold it together — while you take deep breath after deep breath and do entirely new things, acting on the experience of every year, every day, every moment lived before.

And then you come home, or at least to your steady address, and find your world multiplied. Your true home is expanded across a whole nation and a group of people in your heart. And you want to share it. But you’ve gotta find the light to do it by — ‘cause the sun’s dipped behind the peaks. Those peaks you pushed up out of the earth, yourself, days before.

Returning from a week in North Carolina, we carried with us hundreds of pictures, gigs on gigs on gigs of video footage, new names, old names, thousands of words-turned-into-stories, and every stay-up-til-sunrise feeling to match. We went with a mission, built around Hopscotch Fest, where Matthew E. White and 30 performers converged on stage for a performance dubbed One Incantation Under God, a transcendent-and-still-resonating manifestation of the album Big Inner and all the parts that built it: the rhythm section, the horns, the strings, the choir, the art team, the label team, the family, and the friends. Matthew, as always — in his artist shape, or the label shape of Spacebomb — went straight-up nuclear, exploding into a new old light alongside everyone that continues to help construct this particular landscape of New American Music. Yeah, I’ll capitalize it. And I’ll go so far as to say that Music can stand for much more than notions of sound alone. Every sense sings its own song.

So we sang into the following day and created our third North Carolina Friend Island (and I think it may be the tenth in Island History, hot damn). Held in a church, light shining through stained glass, soft carpet underfoot, hushed voices layering in the space before the show began with Snow Panda’s brilliant invocation, Friend Island was the long exhale we all needed — from the night before, from the year before. The tour of our universe that followed — Matthew E. White (with the Spacebomb choir ladies joining in), Hiss Golden Messenger, Sunless (Hometapes’ own Adam Heathcott) — tended toward the stopping of time. You sat there. You looked up. You looked over. You closed your eyes. You could be alone or together.

You could argue this was all foreplay for the climax of Death Blues. Jon Mueller and his band took to the stage and traveled through every inch of the space and — by way of hammered guitars, upright bass, voice, and Mueller’s language of percussion — through every person in the space. Talk about senses. Outside, Slingshot Coffee Co. and Crumb administered our own brand of communion. By the end of Friend Island, I’m questioning what a “release” truly is. Depending on the conditions, a record is a performance is a conversation is a t-shirt is a look-in-the-eye is a cup of coffee is the closing of a van door after a long, long day.

The night came on quick. We ate at Chuck’s (I had a Bear In Heaven), walked down the street in Raleigh, and recognized almost everyone we saw. Waking up at 5am the next morning, the dream state took us over fully, and we dove into a twelve hour music video shoot, on the streets of Durham, for Matthew E. White. The guys from Kamp Grizzly make eye music — and Adam and I guided them through our quiet but constant world of architecture+nature, into our friends’ houses, toward walls of clouds, to Cook Out. We continued the wild tale of Big Inner, alongside Matthew E. White himself. I shot pictures on film all day. We listened to the same song over and over — and all I wanna do is hear it again. That same day, Megafaun was having their party in Raleigh, the likes of Adam Granduciel (War on Drugs), Chris Corsano, and William Tyler joining them on stage. That night, we saw Megafaun do a galaxy spiral alongside Arnold Dreyblatt. Then we ran to drink in No BS Brass, “the best live band in America.” Nearly sleepless for days, I still couldn’t let the night go…til the sun burst through the clouds — and I was flying right through them.

Between these words and pictures is the whole story. I could say I wish you were there, but, if you’re reading this right now, you know, you were.

__________

Big love to Jeremy M. Lange and Abigail Stinnett for a couple of the pictures you see above, as well as to everyone who was in front of my camera.

This month, we pulled back the curtains covering the big windows...

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 10:53:00 -0700

This month, we pulled back the curtains covering the big windows of a little house in the middle of nearly-nowhere. Ormonde’s debut album Machine sits inside that small bungalow, glowing in green and blue and pink. These are the colors of the earth and sky in Marfa, Texas, where Anna-Lynne Williams and Robert Gomez traveled to create an album — half out of platonic-yet-intimate collaboration, half out of desert magic.

Mere days ago, Robert traveled from his Texas home to Anna-Lynne’s place in Seattle. The duo revived their Marfa ways, writing, directing, and acting in their own video — and filming it all on an iPhone. Today we share the window-view with you: watch Ormonde in “I Can’t Imagine” and find them on different terrain — perhaps as themselves or perhaps as different people entirely.

VIDEO: Ormonde “I Can’t Imagine”
MP3: Ormonde “I Can’t Imagine”

If I could wish for one thing, it’s that you could see...

Thu, 23 Aug 2012 11:24:00 -0700

If I could wish for one thing, it’s that you could see what I’ve seen on the road to Big Inner. Matthew E. White’s debut album, released on Tuesday into the loving arms of the world, leaves a seat at the table for you: your memories, your worries, your red-faced reactions to notions of the body and the spirit — and the tropical place in your mind where those converge. Matt’s voice is that warm wind, and the Spacebomb House Band, Horns, Strings, and Choir is the light rain that starts up, cooling you down and drenching you in something far beyond a simple seven-song record.

I think you’re all seeing it, especially as of this past week. From loving notes in my inbox, to the prose of a veritable wave of reviews — writing that goes beyond sheer reporting into realms of straight-up testimony. I wish there was an “abstract idea or feeling” post option on Tumblr. I wish I could go beyond my own stumbling words to let you know what it’s like to have the world believing beside you, not just in Matthew E. White and Big Inner, but in everything Hometapes has ever sweat and bled for. It’s all here.

I can get close. I shot a video at Mercury Lounge on Monday, when Matthew E. White performed on the eve of the album release for an electric (and beautifully silent) room of New Yorkers, so many friends among them. It’s the last song, “Brazos,” and it not only features the culminating vibe of an amazing show, it features Matt’s friend and mentor, Steven Bernstein. He, along with Cameron, Pinson, Trey, Scott, and Gabe, brought it all around. And around. And around.

So, see what I see:
WATCH: Matthew E. White “Brazos” @ Mercury Lounge, 8/20/12

And:

“Resplendently somnolent funk” - Rolling Stone “Artist to Watch”

“Bottomless columns of ethereal soul…magical” - Pitchfork (8.1)

“A dramatic pop-gospel record that hits extremes of the mood spectrum: very easygoing and very obsessive” - NY Times

“A veritable bouillabaisse of sound” - Aquarium Drunkard

“Slow and spacious” - NY Daily News

“A brilliant debut” - Consequence of Sound “Top Star”

“Truly special” - Blurt (9/10 review)

“A trip through the record crates” - WXPN

“Matthew E. White brings together the warm, haunted tones of Leonard Cohen, Terry Reilly, and Dr. John” - Stereogum

“Fully steeped in the nuanced, vigilant and incisive songcraft of totemic American tunesmiths…magnificent” - eMusic