Album Review: Art Deco Cathedrals – Every Pain & Every Pleasure

Posted on May 19, 2011 by Jon Rooney

Art Deco Cathedrals – Every Pain and Every Pleasure
(2011, self-released)

Portland’s Art Deco Cathedrals makes sparse, purely instrumental music with plucked strings, reverb, and the occasional drum machine. Rather than the quiet->less quiet->kinda loud->loud loud->quiet comedown arc of contemporary post-rock, Art Deco Cathedrals’ music draws more from the hypnotic gossamer of 1960s-’70s minimalism and settles comfortably into a quiet gear. Every Pain & Every Pleasure seems to be the first bit of output from Christian Patterson, who records under the Art Deco Cathedrals moniker.

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A collection of 4 short peices, Every Pain & Every Pleasure is unassuming yet promising. The shamisen-like textures and repeated figures create a soft-focus dreamy effect that keeps the music from sounding cold and clinical. It comes off as a bit tentative and too-loosely improvised at times, though. With some more time spent in the proverbial woodshed and the confidence that often produces, Art Deco Cathedrals could start creating some really compelling, adventurous music.

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Thank You Chico, Goodnight

Posted on May 18, 2011 by Levi Fuller

Apparently this is “Levi reminisces about road trips” week. A friend on [Social Networking Site] just posted a link to a song, and since I wasn’t listening to anything at the time, I went over to check it out. Turns out the song was one of 21 on a compilation called Thank You Chico, Goodnight put together by one Maurice Spencer. According to his note on the album page, he’s moving away from that town for the (relatively) bright lights of Portland, and had the idea to collect and co-produce songs about Chico, California from 21 of his favorite Chico artists and put them out as a collection. Of course, this is right up my alley, and I love the idea. This isn’t an album review, as I’m only about halfway through, but the execution and musical quality seems to be pretty darn good, too. Continue reading →

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Back in MY Day: Video

Posted on May 17, 2011 by Indie Rooney

Bah! I’m back! And I’m still unhappy about things and you should be too!

So anyway . . . what’s up with all the blasted music videos these days?

Back in MY day, you only made a music video if you had $1.5M and wanted to show off how badass you were at playing guitar outside a church while your lead singer attended a wedding/funeral and was a douchebag.

Plus . . . WEDDING CAKE SMASH!!! Continue reading →

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Album Review: Stellarondo

Posted on May 16, 2011 by Levi Fuller

Stellarondo – Stellarondo
(2011, self-released)

I’ve had a soft spot for Missoula, Montana since the first (and only) time I ever visited there. My band The Luna Moth drove the 8 or so hours out, played a show at a vintage clothing store with This Is a Process of a Still Life (before moving out here and becoming Scriptures, they seem to have played with pretty much everyone who went through Missoula, as Louis will attest), slept a few hours, then turned right around and drove back. In the few short hours I spent there the town totally charmed me, and I’ve been meaning to go back ever since. (It doesn’t hurt that KBGA, the college station there, gave a good amount of airplay to both of my last couple solo albums.)

Continue reading →

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Working Troubadours: Joe Pug, Ben Gilmer, and Strand of Oaks at Tractor May 13, 2011

Posted on May 12, 2011 by Bart Cameron

To explain why I admire the North Carolinian gone Chicago Joe Pug— a very young songwriter with a bawdy nasal style compared to Gaslight-era Dylan– I point to the third time I heard him play. I already liked his manners. He’d stayed at my house while touring, he’d put me and some rowdy Icelanders up in Chicago as well. He had folk songs that were so well-crafted that he was selling copies in the thousands. But about a year ago, he came to Seattle and did opening duty for one of the toughest acts I can think of, Flatlander himself Mr. Joe Ely. Mr. Ely is a showman, he has a cult following, and his crowd, while they maybe once were young, aren’t the kind of people who look kindly on . . . my kind.

So a year ago, Joe Pug invites me to see him open to the toughest room in the history of Seattle. And Joe Pug gets up in front a crowd raring to see a rough and tumble mid-fifties Texan, says “I’m Joe Pug from Chicago, I won’t take much of your time” and he blows the whole crowd away. Standing ovation situation. Continue reading →

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Peter Vukmirovic Stevens’s Duets for Piano and Buddha Machine

Posted on May 11, 2011 by Levi Fuller

Photo by Tomas Carrillo on Flickr.

One of the artists featured on Volume 24 of Ball of Wax (coming out tonight!) is a local composer named Peter Vukmirovic Stevens. He has composed for everything from solo piano to symphony orchestra, but the pieces of his that most intrigued me were his compositions for solo piano and Buddha Machine.

What’s a Buddha Machine, you ask? It’s a delightful little device (created by FM3) that fits in your pocket and plays loops of soothing and interesting music. The creators openly encourage Buddha Machine users to take their loops and remix, re-edit, or collaborate with them, and Stevens has taken up that challenge with gusto, setting his machine on various loops and composing piano pieces that interact and play off of them. “I wrote these pieces to work with the Buddha Machine as a real duet,” says Stevens, “not just to add another layer of ambient music to the loops. I wanted to draw more on the harmonic and rhythmic structure of the loops.” Continue reading →

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The Names They Are A-Changin’

Posted on May 9, 2011 by Levi Fuller

As previously mentioned, the Ball of Wax 24 release show this Wednesday at the Sunset features five artists (myself included) who date back to the first year of Ball of Wax. And that is true, although all five names might not be familiar to BoW diehards. I thought I’d take this opportunity to give you a little background. Continue reading →

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Three Great Women Voices Live in Seattle Tonight

Posted on May 6, 2011 by Bart Cameron

Seattle is more balanced than most cities, but you still don’t see that many woman singers at the clubs in town on an average night. Tonight we have two very very good local singers at two different clubs, to say nothing of the return of Wanda Jackson to Seattle to play Neumos.

First, about the three acts. Wanda Jackson is somewhat historic– she’s a founder of rockabilly. I found out about her when I was reading about her label mate, Gene Vincent. In my opinion, hers are the best rockabilly numbers Capitol Records put out in the 50s. Also, she dated Elvis . . . which is funny. Thin Elvis. And then Jack White just released an interesting album with her, The Party Ain’t Over. On it, Wanda does an outstanding version of the Bob Dylan tune “Thunder on a Mountain.” I think it’s one of my favorite songs of the year. Continue reading →

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[glocal scene] Beast Reality

Posted on May 5, 2011 by Phil Heron

Beast RealityI love a band with intensity and ‘balls’. The latter is not a well-defined term, and can no doubt be argued to mean many a thing; ‘balls’ here means courageous. I don’t wish to get into the etymological origins of the term, I’ll leave that to the academics, but I heard the New York based band Le Rug described as having ‘balls’ and thought it was apt.

Continue reading →

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Discover the Magic of Multiples

Posted on May 4, 2011 by Jon Rooney

Brooklyn-based the Magic of Multiples (heard on Ball of Wax Volumes 19, 23, and the forthcoming 24) is one Alex Drum, a lo fi classicist in possession of the indisputable formula for fuzzy, charming bedroom pop.  The goodness found all throughout the Magic of Multiples is the same goodness found in bands like the Aisler Set, Girlysounds-era Liz Phair and any number of wonderful, handmade, seemingly-lost releases on Asaurus Records.  Reverb, hazy keyboards, laconic vocals, major key melodies, intriguing lyrics, an actual 4 track (so says the Bandcamp tags), and a smattering of found sounds come together to make gems like this:

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Which can be found on this FREE self-titled release here.

While Alex Drum seems in good shape with his muse, his projects seem pretty jumbled.  First, the Magic of Multiples is either also known as Whales or the project’s full name is Whales/The Magic of Multiples per Bandcamp.  Second, Drum is in another project called FUNSHIP which has an excellent song called “FUNSHIP” that’s the same song (and seemingly same recording) found in the Magic of Multiples self-titled release and is also on the upcoming Ball of Wax.  He’s also in a band called Shiv Hurrah (heard on Ball of Wax #22) that seems to be pretty active in NYC. There doesn’t seem to be am official website to sort this out, but he does have a blog that’s worth poking around for answers.  Some sort of infographic is needed to sort this all out.

Confusion aside, there’s something subtle and hushed about these songs that works wonders without treading into the twee quicksand of preciousness.  Well worth checking out.

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