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Friday, Oct 30 2015, 2PM
"For me, the sonic geography of this record is like a combination of The Smiths' Meat Is Murder and (Springsteen's) Darkness on the Edge of Town. That's how I felt it: Mysterious and romantic, but, at the same time, brooding, with some sharp edges and a lot of fog, a lot of rain. I could feel all those things in me when I thought of her songs and the lyrics. I could feel them wanting to manifest in the arrangements." usat.ly On Wednesday, December 9th, KEXP and Neumos present Taylor Swift vs. Ryan Adams Cover Night, featuring Katie Kate + Cataldo + The Mama Rags + NAVVI + Sister Girlfriend + Matt Bishop (of Hey Marseilles) +COHO + Lena Simon (of La Luz) + Silver Torches | Age Restrictions: 21+ bit.ly
"I started wearing make-up and dyeing my hair when I was about 14 or 15. It wasn't the done thing at school. I was naive enough to think that the other kids would side with me against the authorities. But I was wrong - they beat me up instead. So I stopped going. When people don't understand what's going on they treat you with violence. But that only made me more determined. I've always been extremely stubborn, and that helped me along at the time. It was a cause of concern for my parents in those days. They were very worried about what would happen to me. And also about what was going on in my mind. They often used to try to persuade me to change my appearance - for the sake of a peaceful life." ~ David Sylvian, from "Beauty & The Beast" by Huw Collingbourne, Flexi pop, December 1981. To discover more about Japan, head this way: www.nightporter.co.uk/
Some cool trivia about The Gift: "The album moved away from the simple three-chord music of In the City and This Is the Modern World, and the more melodic All Mod Cons, Setting Sons and Sound Affects, to demonstrate Weller's love of northern soul. Funk bass lines and wah-wah guitar effects were often used throughout the album, along with jazz influences such as brass sections and saxophone solos (most notably on the track "Precious") and 'Trans-Global Express' which was based on the Northern Soul funk hit 'So Is The Sun' by World Column, lifting the chorus and rhythm line in their entirety from that song. Only two songs on the album exceed three and a half minutes." bit.ly
"SASA started his career in the electronic music business as a producer with his partner Felix in the early 90s. Having the main focus on club-sounds it was a logic consequence to also perform as a DJ. In the year 2003 Sasa founded the label Hilltribe with his partner. Contemporaneously with their first release Duptribe-EP HT001 his DJ career launched. Through international gigs and all over Germany he made himself known as a DJ and also promoting the label Hilltribe." thedjlist.com
No listed tour dates for Cut Copy except for a DJ gig at the Snowglobe Festival in South Lake Tahoe, CA, but you can check out a whack of great rare tracks and remixes at their site: cutcopy.net
"Instead of just meandering through hazy memories and saying over and over again 'this is who I was and this is who I am now', with Hesitation Marks, Trent does something much more interesting. In his typical concept album/rock opera style, Trent is going back to 1994 as a ghost and haunting his past self as both a source of rebuke and a source of guidance. To make things even more interesting, he is taking his old self on a surreal odyssey not unlike the one that Trent took us on with The Downward Spiral. The parallels between the two and the person that Trent brings to light in the wake of the destruction and the reconstruction combine to give us one of the most rewarding musical experiences Trent has thrown at us yet." blog.kexp.org
Chris and Cosey are Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti of Throbbing Gristle; check out this Revue Review: blog.kexp.org
"Toronto rave gods Crystal Castles are known for their brutally intense live show. Alice Glass smokes nearly an entire pack of cigarettes on stage and makes some good progress on a bottle of Jack Daniels, while Ethan Kath barely looks up from his table, making sure that every pulsing bass drop shakes the building to its foundation and keeps the energy at impossibly high levels." For our full review of the show, plus photos, head right over here: blog.kexp.org
Chuck Prophet came by our studio with his band and played a brilliant set, which you can watch in its entirety here: blog.kexp.org
A classic for your pre-Hallowe'en jiving. From Levi Fuller's Review Revue come these quotes scrawled on the label meant for station notes. Amongst them: "It’s fucking awesome!" "It’s fucking facemelting!" "It’s fucking awesomely facemelting!" "‘Marquee Moon’ is the definition of rock ‘n’ roll music." For the rest, click here: blog.kexp.org
"'Evil', sometimes listed as 'Evil (Is Going On)', is a Chicago blues standard written by Willie Dixon. Howlin' Wolf recorded the song for Chess Records in 1954. It was included on the 1959 compilation album Moanin' in the Moonlight. When he re-recorded it for The Howlin' Wolf Album in 1969, 'Evil' became Wolf's last charting single (#43 Billboard R&B chart). The 1954 song features sidemen Hubert Sumlin and Jody Williams (guitars), Otis Spann (piano), Willie Dixon (double-bass), and Earl Phillips (drums). Wolf achieves a coarse, emotional performance with his strained singing, lapsing into falsetto. The song, a twelve-bar blues, is punctuated with a syncopated backbeat, brief instrumental improvisations, upper-end piano figures, and intermittent blues harp provided by Wolf. The lyrics caution about the "evil" that takes place in a man's home when he is away, concluding with 'you better watch your happy home.'" bit.ly
Recorded at local treasure Easy Street Records in West Seattle, here's a live performance from HLAK: kexp.org
"Weiss and Fagenson were childhood friends who grew up together in suburban Detroit. Partly due to Fagenson's poverty they decided to form Was (Not Was) in 1979. The name of the band was derived from Fagenson's then-infant son Tony, who was just beginning to talk and enjoyed contradicting words such as "Blue" with 'Not Blue.'" bit.ly
Dig deep into our video archives and check out this live in-studio featuring Lyrics Born with wife Joyo Velarde on backing vocals and DJ D-Sharp on the wheels of steel: blog.kexp.org
Written for Bono's mother, who passed away after suffering a cerebral aneurysm at the funeral of her own father when he was fourteen years old, this song was the first song off the first album of a young band where two of the original members, Bono and Larry, bonded through shared immense loss; Larry Mullen Jr, who celebrates his 54th birthday tomorrow, lost his younger sister (aged nine) when he was twelve, and his own mother in a car accident when he was fifteen years old. Now, all celebrate full lives with many children, and the band still thrives with its most release just last year. Happy Samhain.
"Björk wanted to make an album with an intimate, winter, domestic sound. With the rising popularity of Napster and music downloads, she decided to use instruments whose sound would not be compromised when downloaded and played in a computer: these include the harp — played by Zeena Parkins —, celesta, clavichord and music boxes, the latter were custom made; strings are also heavily featured. In Vespertine Björk also added 'microbeats' made from the sampling of shuffling cards and ice being cracked, among other household sounds with the help of the duo Matmos. The music video for 'Pagan Poetry,' directed by Nick Knight, which, as stated on its making-of page, 'is about a woman preparing herself for marriage and for her lover.' It was also one of Björk's most controversial because of the highly blurry and stylized images of explicit sex it contains, including fellatio and ejaculation, and also images of large needles sewing pearls to the skin." bit.ly
The Waterboys are still going strong and touring, though no North American dates thus far. If you're lucky enough to be in the Emerald or British Isles, check these out: www.mikescottwaterboys.com/waterboys-shows.php
The Waterboys crossed the pond and played some glorious songs for us in our tiny studio; check out videos and photos here: blog.kexp.org
From Levi Fuller's Review Revueon Metallica's Garage Days Revisited, "There’s a lot of good material here (and a lot of swearing), and what I know about Metallica is pretty much confined to what I learned from watching Some Kind of Monster (which, if you have not seen, you absolutely must)..." Read on to see what KCMU reviewers thought of the album: blog.kexp.org
If you're looking for some good reading, check out "AC/DC: High-Voltage Rock ‘N’ Roll: The Ultimate Illustrated History" by Phil Sutcliffe, which is described by KEXP's Chris Estey as capable and capacious, large and luxurious top-of-the-stereo-lid book... Note: THE PHOTOS AND ARTWORK ARE INSANE. A paroxysm of sweaty head-banging and a flurry of skinny boy legs scampering under a classic guitar on every page. Snarling yob-vox Brian Johnson swallowing a mic to find the bourbon bottle he actually accidentally swallowed down in the pit of his angry belly. Et al. This is not a little fact-finding book, but a hard and heavy hit on every album the Down Under grind-pop band’s ever put out, splashed with adoration over full color pages and costing three American tenners and a five." blog.kexp.org
If you had a time of it, hearing that song whilst wishing you could see the visuals outside of your own head, here you go: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCZDWZFtyWY
"We’ve never been accomplished musicians, technically. We sort of got a bit better in that respect. (laughs) No, I don’t think there was a huge change there. One thing, after Bauhaus, the three of us (Kevin, David J, Daniel Ash) went on and did Love and Rockets for actually like a decade and a half. I feel we have this intuition now that was born from that period of time of working together — almost a psychic connection in a way. That definitely helped with the album and when we played live with Bauhaus." ~ Kevin Haskins More from our exclusive interview: blog.kexp.org
Formed by ex-Specials' Terry Hall and Lynval Golding, with backing vocals by Bananarama. Yes, really. And the results are nothing short of completely delightful.
West Seattle's own Telekinesis is currently on tour, and will be playing Neumos on November 7th with Say Hi opening. They were just here in our studio playing songs from the newest album; check it out here: blog.kexp.org If you want to play a videogame based on this very song, designed by two boys from Seattle (one eleven, the other fourteen), head right here: scratch.mit.edu
If the instrumentation of this song rings a bell, Psapp provided the theme song for "Grey's Anatomy," with the song "Cosy in the Rocket": www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZBdVqfv__I
"The four-piece are primarily film-makers with cutting-edge video and sound design work under their belts for the likes of The Temper Trap and Penguin Prison. For their independent short films they are award winners and regular fixtures at film festivals. From their base in South East London, a former bank now aptly named ‘bretonLABS,’ they can be found capturing and cataloguing a wealth of found sounds which they use in all of their audio-visual work. Breton intense D.I.Y attitude led them to release three critically acclaimed EPs in 2010; the most notable of which was released on Hemlock Recordings, the label responsible for championing releases by Fantastic Mr Fox, Mount Kimbie, and James Blake. The band spent a large part of 2011 recording their debut album at Sundlaugin, the remote Icelandic studio home of Sígur Rós." Follow the link to read on and see the gorgeous video for "Edward The Confessor": bit.ly
"Joy Division took the raw energy and anger of punk and added sophisticated layers like dub echoes and heavy bass, keyboards and robotic dance beats. Singer Ian Curtis battled with complex life issues and the disease epilepsy as the band became more and more successful, ultimately hanging himself on the eve of their American tour. The remaining members went on to form the internationally acclaimed group New Order." Follow the link and immerse yourself in an audio-documentary on this seminal band. kexp.org
If rumours are hopefully true, Radiohead are busy at work this autumn on a new album. Until then, we'll just have to content ourselves with a delicious in-depth concert review and ravishing photos from the last time they graced our shores three very long years ago: blog.kexp.org
"In 1956, George Clinton formed a doo-wop group in the back of a barbershop in Plainfield, New Jersey. He named this band The Parliaments. He loved R&B and the harmonizing sound of the 50s, but in the 60s his band started listening more to Jimi Hendrix than to Ray Charles. He threw out the suits the band performed in and exchanged them for torn jeans. The Parliaments hit the R&B charts in 1967 with their first official single, '(I Wanna) Testify.' George Clinton masterminded the creation of a second band who could work outside the sound of The Parliaments. He took the backing band from The Parliaments and created a second band called Funkadelic. Taking inspiration from other funk acts like Sly and The Family Stone and psychedelic rock groups Cream and the Rolling Stones, Clinton added rock stylings to the music and crazy costumes to the stage show. Funkadelic would focus more on long jams, rock sounds and showcasing of players who were usually in the background." bit.ly
