Rocktober 2014 - First Announcement

And so it starts . . . 

Hilang Child

I didn't make it to the Atlanta Jazz Festival in Piedmont Park yesterday, even though I really wanted to hear Bill Frissell and Ahmad Jamal.  The only rain of the weekend, and a thunderstorm at that, blew through Georgia just as I was about to leave home for the park, and it was enough to discourage me.

Instead, after spending the morning downloading Hundred Waters, I spent the time I would otherwise have been at the Jazz Festival with Lotus Plaza's Spooky Action At A Distance, listening to a few KEXP podcasts, and exploring the Dead Can Dance box set, 1981-1998. 

Hundred Waters

LA-by-way-of-Gainesville, Florida's Hundred Waters, who we last saw opening for Alt-J at the godforsaken Tabernacle Masquerade, will be returning to East Atlanta Village, where they previously performed at 529 during Rocktober 2012, this time to play the estimable Earl on July 1 to promote their forthcoming album The Moon Rang Like A Bell.   Meanwhile, you can enjoy Down From the Rafters from the new album, above, and be sure to stream the follow-up suggestions that appear after you play the song, as well.

But wait, there's more!  For a limited time (I think just this Memorial Day Weekend), Hundred Waters are releasing their first, self-titled LP, a couple of their remix EPs, and six songs from other artists, including Majical Cloudz and Suno Deko (who'll be opening for them at The Earl), as a free Torrents download at http://bundles.bittorrent.com/#!/bundles/hundredwaters, and a half-dozen songs from their forthcoming LP at http://blog.bittorrent.com/2014/05/22/hundred-waters-x-bittorrent-the-moon-rang-like-a-bell/.  

Need I say more?  Go get 'em!

Prodigy

As good a review of To Be Kind as any I've seen, and this 14-year-old kid does it in one take without reading from a script, and discusses the album both in the context of the band's previous output as well as its own merits.  I'm impressed. 

"Genius 'Round the World Stands Hand in Hand, and One Shock of Recognition Runs the Whole Circle 'Round" - Michael Gira

Dude, I Was There

It appears that I've make my photo debut at web site Consequence of Sound while attending the Spoon set at Shaky Knees.

Wye Oak at Terminal West, Atlanta, May 21, 2014

Wye Oak performed last night at Terminal West.  Montreal's Braids opened.

Braids were a revelation. I had heard of them before, but I'm not sure that I had ever actually heard them before, and didn't know what to expect. 

I'm not sure I can describe what it was that I heard -  they're a little hard to pigeon-hole.  You can classify them as "experimental rock," but that description doesn't really tell you anything.  The closest comparison I can think of is Purity Ring, but with more of an ambient backsound than Purity's thumping back-beats, and not that their terrific drummer didn't throw down some wicked beats of his own from time to time.

So that was like super-cool, and the audience expressed some real affection for the band.  After a short break, Baltimore's Wye Oak took the stage.  Last night was the last night of their current tour and they're now on a brief rest from touring before starting a European tour later this month.   

Wye Oak, of course, are guitarist and singer Jenn Wasner and simultaneous-drummer-and-keyboardist Andy Stack.   We've seen Wye Oak before, opening for Explosions in the Sky at The Tabernacle.  We've also seen Wasner's side project, Flock of Dimes, at The Earl, opening for Sharon Van Etten.

Both Wye Oak and Braids before them spoke enthusiastically and emotionally about how much they each had enjoyed the other's company on tour together.  They both seem like sincere and generous people - $2 of each ticket sold went to charity, an item mentioned on the venue's web site but never once by either band from the stage - although musically they're quite different.

Photo by Wye Oak

Overall, Wye Oak's sound was a little more confined to traditional song structure and lacked the generous dollops of noise that they included in their 2011 set at The Tabernacle, but they still sounded great and commanded everyone's attention throughout their 75-minute set.  

Wye Oak played mostly songs from their new album, Shriek, with some older songs thrown in too, although they didn't get around to I Hope You Die.  However, they closed the night with a great encore consisting of a cover of Kate Bush's Running Up That Hill and their stand-out song Civilian, followed by a Wasner solo version of Doubt.

Wye Oak

Wye Oak is performing tonight at Terminal West.