YOU NEED THIS! The Pink Mountaintops – Outside Love. Release: 05th of May 2009

 

 

 

Vancouver native Stephen McBean (Jerk With A Bomb, Ex Dead Teenager, Black Mountain) has been recording music for 25 years now but is generally unheard of in New Zealand.

This is the 3rd Pink Mountaintops album from a catalogue that also includes 2 EPs and is described by their record label Jagjaguwar, like this, “The ten songs on “Outside Love” are about or influenced by weddings in Montreal, winter, Pink Floyd’s The Final Cut, Christmas albums, that one Exile song and that one Echo and the Bunnymen song, the Bermuda Triangle, being depressed in the sunshine, people who haven’t made out yet but will in the future, The Everly Brothers, clowns in the ceilings, and bedrooms where skinheads used to live.” And that I find pretty darn accurate.

Another way would be to say this is most definitely their most fluid, listenable album yet. While the S/T album and Axis of Evol would ever so slightly jolt you from time to time (pleasurably of course), the formula has now been perfected and patented. 

A family affair, this album also features guests from the likes of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Whiskeytown, Blood Meridian, Bonnie Prince Billy and of course, Black Mountain.

Standout track so far is “Holiday”. Most basic in arrangement, you can almost imagine 6 or 7 people sitting in the backyard circled around a fire, each playing their part passing a cheap bottle of wine around. This is song is carefree, beginning with one of my new most-favorite ever lyrics, “Everyone I love deserves a holiday in the sun almost every day”.

Fans of the Brian Jonestown Massacre, Wil Oldham, Nick Cave and the like will find their new favorite band in the Pink Mountaintops. One record or another.

BUT why write pages upon pages about something when the captive audience can listen to it now for free? Visit www.myspace.com/pinkmountaintops and you can hear the album in its entirety right now!

Once you’ve hear it and want to purchase the album go to www.is.gd/wqJX pre-order it and get the full album as a download RIGHT NOW!!!

After that, if you’re still hungry go to http://www.hivestudios.net where you can download Ex Dead Teenager’s second album for free! They come across more like Jon Spencer’s dirty little brother playing Birthday Party songs. In New Zealand terms, I totally have a rock-fantasy line-up with these guys, Batrider & Die! Die! Die!

DIG NOW AND FOREVER HOLD YOUR PEACEPIPE!

MP3: Pink Mountaintops – vampire
MP3: Pink Mountaintops – while you were dreaming

:: Evan James

 

Markj “Genre Lomu” DJ Set

Markj “trollied”

This is the latest mix from DJ Markj. His sets include elements of Techno , Prog, Electro, Tech, and Deep House. Markj is a Taranaki born Kiwi who has been based in Melbourne for the past few years but is about to move to Vancouver Canada. He is definitely THE man to keep an ear out for!

MP3: Markj – Genre Lomu [DJ Set]

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Markj/23570976428
http://www.myspace.com/thesoundsofmarkj

:: Dr H

artist: no age. album: nouns.


welcome to the no age – while everyone gazed longingly after the steadily growing shadow of my bloody valentine; keenly following the saga of “what kevin shields did next (primal scream ‘XTRMNTR’ & ‘evil heat’, sofia coppola’s ‘lost in translation’ soundtrack) these little psilocybin-secreting ‘shrooms pushed up through the muck.

no age’s “nouns” is superb sub pop – back when it was solid. they cover the flying nun’s HDU, verlaines, the clean harmony ridden, sugar-coated, wall-of-sound era with skill. melodic guitars swathed in distortion, angry, bass drum belting punk. it’s enough to get you flicking through your 3Ds collection to see if it IS really the same chords. this is the sort of thing that sells vinyl people. your mp3s – heck even your m4a’s won’t do this justice. no super slick pro-tooled, produced-to-hell pureé here. it’s ruff as guts, one ear too close to the amp to hear anything for days, live carnage in your ear-canal.

so i’m not musical, i can only sign-post you by name: if you dig on any of the above; love of diagrams, thought creature, deer hunter, the dead c, or any other nasty mould encrusted ear-candy then check these suckers out.

it’s like that strangely familiar chunk of green stuff you found on the floor in front of the stove: it may kill you, it may make you stranger – you’ll just have to smoke it and see…

MP3: No Age – teen creeps

:: Nurse NOS

artist: peaches. album: i feel cream.

 

“uh-oah, uh oah, uh-oah…”

after a slightly less punchy than the title/concept last album, peaches follows up her relentless ass-kicking festival-fisting frenzied recent parade of live shows with a nice, tight, pounding, at home & in your earphones experience via her new album “i feel cream”.

she doesn’t give a fuck if you call her, maul her, fall for her or follow her. which is essential, obviously. if she was any other flash in the pan, cling to your producer and the latest fashion photographer, full of her past-glories pop-whore she’d be screwed.

i have to say i’ve never found her previous albums the full squid – always more style than content, a solid six singles and some saucy filler. this time you get the feeling there’s at least five more full length eps worth of rank, rinsed-out horn-dog b-sides lying around the studio floor just waiting to be unleashed so they can dry hump your unsuspecting limbs…

this time the peach spreads her legs and sprinkles a whole lot wider. even covering a little kylie face-time in the uber tight “lose you”. you’re going to hear this baby on the radio and start thinking “is that the new peaches?! oh man, she’s sold out, too clean, blah, blah, etc” but before you’ve even reached for the skip button you’ll find yourself thumbing yourself mercilessly and pulling over to call your gf/bf/dj/pc or mac to beg them to start the download so you can get this goodness anytime you want it. which will be often.

where peaches gets it right isn’t just the variety – covering all the bases, satisfying all fans: brothers and sisters, fingerers and fisters – she clearly is still enjoying herself, and knows you should too. the transition between tracks and styles is smooth and unrelenting. only the slightly miss-able too-slick title track gives you time to reach for a glass of water before the staccato-slam dance crunked-up chorus reaches round and grabs you by the throat to pull you back under the spell/duvet/doona/disco ball (delete as appropriate).

and then you get “more”. more of the same, more than you asked for, more than you can take, but you know you’re gonna damn well try.
***WARNING: if you’ve ever OD-ed on anything don’t listen to this track unless you can handle the relapse. she’s nasty, sweet, seductive and firing on all beats. you will find yourself crawling to the porcelain telephone and trying to call your mum/jesus/the samaritans – anyone who’ll listen to your helpless pleas to stop the world spinning.

i first heard this on an easter weekend and after a relentless six laps out-loud even my orthodox christian greek neighbours were enraptured in the slick soul-slapping production and forsaking all others for her serpentine sounds. can i get a goddess-damn!!

stand-outs have to include the no-doubt soulwax produced “showstopper”. what can i say – it’s not the e-talking, but the grainy analogue synths (i pick upright korgs in there somewhere) that’ll run up your leg like warm pee in reverse, until your pogo-ing your way to oblivion.

and is that digitalism i hear offering the warm teet of “mommy complex”?
BITTY!!!
it’s enough to make a grown man cry- just for attention, of course…

“mud” continues the minimal mash: and trust me – it cannot be easy to make something this complicated sound so simple. peaches vents her vixen and shows she’s so much more than a rapping, ear-raping, one-trick pony. purring and cooing her way through so much filthy goodness with such syrupy succubus style she’d send alison goldfrapp back to her vocal coach in tears. again with the evil ass-slapping, glam, foot-stomping yet euro-tight grainy, distorted FUNK.

ladies and un-gentleman: i declare peaches has wrastled her mojo back into line and mercifully unleashed it upon us all. open your ears and say “aaahh…”

http://www.peachesrocks.com/

MP3: Peaches – more [No Longer Available]
Buy: Peaches – I Feel Cream

:: Nurse NOS