Bring Pillows: Soft Fest

Another weekend in Baltimore, and yet another heap of shows to choose from. One event certainly stands out, spanning both Saturday and Sunday. Soft Fest features some of the areas finer mellifluous tunes.

Both days get going at 6 PM and run until midnight, with over ten acts each night all worth checking out. Organizers promise other activities of a more humbled variety, including chess tournaments, silent films, and Tom Selleck. Yup.

I was even told that the entire space would be lined with blankets. All mellow vibes aside, there's some pretty extraordinary talent lined up. Start clicking below:

Saturday
6:45: Run DMT
7:00: Semya
7:20: Holy Ghost Party
8:00: Each Others
8:20: The Bow Legged Gorilla
9:00: Turquoise Cats
9:20: Soft Cat
10:00: Poor Mouth
10:20: Avocado Happy Hour
11:00: Dustin Wong
11:20: M.C. Schmidt

Sunday
7:00: Daytime
7:20: Comeback Ranch
8:00: Bethany Dinsick
8:20: Happy Family
9:00: Andy Abelow
9:20: Lands and Peoples
10:00: Pilar Diaz and Lindsay Rowzinski
10:20: Secret Mountains
11:00: John Somers and Liz Meredith
11:20: Lesser Gonzalez Alvarez

I've highlighted a bunch of these artists before, as a lot have contributed some of the more beautiful tracks from within 695. Dustin Wong's magnificent Seasons has found its way to my turntable often, an LP drenched in unique textures and layers.

Avocado Happy Hour are currently working on their next album, with much to look forward to. They kindly sent me over a couple live tracks from an acoustic set they did at Sonic Circuits. Below is "Sitting Down", performed with a vibraphone, marimba, glockenspiel, and Amanda singing through a megaphone.

Happy Family had an EP titled Sound Farm that had me pretty excited s few months back, with one of the catchier floaty bedroom pop jams I've heard. Check out "Cups" below.

And Lands and Peoples have shown much promise, as their hand-sewn sleeved EP is lush with dreamy folk pop sure to have you thinking of some of the better acts possessing similar sounds. Check out EP standout "Bad Habits".



There are others playing that I've pointed out before, and many of which I hope to recommend in the future. Stop by and stay awhile on Saturday or Sunday, or both. I've been asked to provide you with this email address, in case you need to know the location of said gathering. With a flyer like the one below, and Tom Selleck promised to be in attendance, showing up is a no brainer.

Photos: Height with Friends / AK Slaughter

Height w/Friends stormed the Windup Space last Friday, joined by the likes of Ak Slaughter, Lizz King, and Lesser Gonzalez Alvarez. We made it in time for the final three acts, along with Valerie who snapped some excellent photos that are all below.

This was the album release party for Height w/Friends' Baltimore Highlands remix album, but AK Slaughter also just dropped some love. Aran and Emily's mixtape, which you can grab here for free, is pretty stacked with all kinds of fun cuts from the duo. They killed it yet again live on Friday, and appeared to be having a grand old time doing it. They've got another show this Friday at Sonar.

Height w/Friends featured Mickey Free and Emily Slaughter backing up Height vocally, and they did a damn fine job doing so. The beats hit loud, Height was as amped as always, and Mickey and Emily were essential in weaving it all together. Look for more to come from all three MCs, including a new full length on the way soon from Emily's AK Slaugter. Peep the rest of the photo set below, or click here for the set on our Flikr.


Photos by Valerie

Interview / Mixtape / Photos: AK Slaughter

I recently had the privilege of putting together a photo shoot with local hip hop duo AK Slaughter, as their A Personal Matter's choice cuts continue to infiltrate my playlists. The new mixtape is also absurdly good, and you can download it here for free, or stream it at the very bottom of this post.

This photo shoot/interview sesh involved Valerie's super fun light writing photography, and was a whole mess of fun to help out with. No photoshop necessary, all light effects in the photos were "written" live at the shoot by Emily, Aran, Joe, and me.

I also asked Emily Slaughter and Aran Keating about the mixtape, the new album they are working on, the show on Friday at the Windup Space, and hypothetical photo shoot-based scenarios. Read on to peep the interview, pics, and mixtape.

You just dropped a free mixtape, what went into putting this together?

Aran: It's a DJ mix that I have wanted to do for a while. It is basically a vehicle for a bunch of tracks that we don't really think of as fullly-produced "songs." So we took all these tracks that we have been doing live for a long time, where the beat is really just a loop of a song we liked and I linked em all together with other tracks, acapellas, instrumentals and live stuff that we wanted to use. It is especially fun to take other people's acapellas and hear what, say, Yung Joc sounds like on an AK Slaughter beat. Then I did some new mixes of our tracks and made it all do the mashed potato and I'm pretty happy with the result.

Your mixtape ranges from sampling Elvis to Cutty Ranks to the Cardigans... who are your biggest influences and in what way have you incorporated them with AK Slaughter's music?

Emily: Aran and I both listen to a bunch of different music, I think that shows in our own music... especially our super sample heavy beats. He listens to way more rap than I ever have and I would say is more lyrically influenced by rap music than I am (is that true Aran?). When I listen to rap, I mostly listen to the old school girls having fun stuff like Roxanne Shante, her rivals JJ Fad and Salt n' Pepa. If I could write lyrics like Kool Keith I would die like a thousand times. Country ballads like The Carter Family's "I'm Thinking Tonight of My Blue Eyes", Tammy Wynette's "The Ways to Love a Man" and "Apartment Number 9" have a big influence on me lyrically. Any music about shit going bad basically rules and serves as fodder for my songs, like Joy Division for example. We're working on a new song that samples Bananarama, oh yes.

Aran: We are always gonna pull samples from everywhere that we can think of: if we dig it we'll sample it. So, I like to think that we are more influenced by this old-school mid 80s mindset of artists like Rick Rubin or Prince Paul who would sample a Doobie Brothers or some obscure garage rock song as easily as a james brown drum break or a rap song that was just released. I think what's great about hip-hop is that you can be really shameless about where your samples are coming from....as long as you are flipping a track in a new way, you can jack an entire song (like we've done with out Hall and Oates jams) or you can pull small bits of samples from all over the place and compose something from the ground up.

I had fun attempting to draw upside down crosses over your heads. You both dig pentagrams, apparently. Emily tells me you guys are working on your next album, are you moving in a more black metal direction with your stuff? Do you have some dark metal party jams in store for us?

Aran: Yes and yes.

Emily: I only got into black metal like a year ago. I've always listened to the more mainstream stuff, like Metallica and whatnot, but I kept hearing about these insane Nordic guys and I had to check them out. My adventures in the realm of darkness have been kind of half-assed: I read Lords of Chaos and got a friend to give me copies of Mayhem, Celtic Frost albums... etc. I really really like the way it sounds, it is exciting and kind of exhilarating, I need to make more of an effort to expand my library. I'm also really into the imagery and the history of the movement. The album and t-shirt art is amazing, we actually based our own t-shirts on that aesthetic. The contemporary history of the genre is pretty ridiculous (with the church burnings and murders and all) but the I think Norse history and folklore is very interesting.... I've been researching the pagan rituals and the gods associated with them for various projects.

As for AK Slaughter, I'd say the t-shirts and the casual use of pentagrams and upside down crosses will be about as far as we go into the dark world. I think a black metal/rap hybrid would end up sounding like rap rock and no one wants to hear that.

Yeah, probably a terrible awesome idea anyways. What was the best place you ever vomited?

Aran: I loved it when Emily vomited into my mouth. It was a happy accident.

Emily: The Roman Colosseum. It sucked. I writhed in the grass for several hours while my friend toured the ruins with his parents.

If you were climbing out of an abyss and only one of you could make it out alive, who wouldn't get sucked into the theoretical neon chasm?

Emily: Aran and I are a team. We would help each other out of this hypothetical abyss and then high five in the air.

Aran: Em and I are tighter than C3PO's underoos. We would tunnel out of that bitch with our bare hands.

You guys have a pretty rad show this Friday night at the Windup Space, whats your favorite Height w/Friends jam? Lizz King jaunt? Lesser Gonzalez Alvarez song?

Emily: Picking a favorite Height track is hard... narrowing it down to just Height with Friends songs makes it a bit easier, because there are less of them. When I listen to Mike Stone, I can't help but stomp and shake, it is totally cool in every way. I'll say Mike Stone for now (check out the video!) but tomorrow I'll probably have another favorite. Lizz King is the bomb.

Aran: I feel that AK Slaughter has a lot in common with Lizz King. Her music is part weird, part dance, part theatrics, part rock, part trad...I dig her stuff a lot. I also really can't wait to hear the new Height record. That song Link Wray and the one called Something Lagoon I've heard live a few times and are blowin my brain.

Photos all by Valerie

Photo Review: Whartscape 2009 Day Three

Photos by Chrissy

This year's Whartscape was nearly impossible for one entity to swallow in its entirety, and the third day certainly put the exclamation point on an action-packed weekend.

Above, Chrissy captured nearly 100 shots of the majority of the bands playing in the MICA lot, and not without bubbles, relay races, and slow dances! The weather remained beautiful and worries of interferences of any kind did not dare to cross anyone's mind. This year's Whartscape was extremely well run all around, and much thanks to Wham City for all of their hard work.

Early in the day, Lesser Gonzalez Alvarez showed off a wide array of promising new tunes that bubbled and crooned their way through the hot mid day sun. Zomes provided a very chill and transcendent set of looped out melodies. And, Santa Dads provided smiles to all as they beatboxed and trumpeted their way through a pretty laid back set.

As the sun began to fade behind the brick wall, excitement began to soak through the crowd. After Gary War's solid set, Future Islands took the stage. Synth pop bliss immediately ensued, as the trio tore through a set well balanced with joyful anthems and heartfelt ballads. Sam is a true showman, as he poured out his heart and soul throughout the entire performance. Bubbles were blown, and dancing was contagious.

As most would expect, Double Dagger absolutely killed. Fresh off their national tour in support of More, it was clear that they were a bit amped to be back on their home turf. Nolan began the set with a slow dance to "Vivre Sans Temps Mort" and ended it with crowd surfing to my personal favorite "Half-Life". Inflatable drums were tossed into the crowd, much softer than the real one thrown last year. Nothing but good vibes all around, as these guys rocked just as hard as ever.

Dan Deacon put everything he had into Whartscape 2009, and one would expect nothing less from his performance Sunday night. Performing with his ensemble, the crowd somehow seemed to double in size. With group interpretive dances leading onto North Ave, a new song, and a relay race, this performance was nothing short of legendary.

Happy faces were worn proudly by everyone present, and the crowd even seemed to actually abide this time when Dan suggested everyone dance more up and down rather than sideways. Not to mention the ensemble sounded fantastic, a seemingly difficult task when working with that many talents onstage.

Stay tuned for photos this week from Day two (Saturday) of Whartscape 2009.

Baltimore @ SXSW

The organized chaos that is South by Southwest gets going in less than 2 weeks. Bmore shall be wholeheartedly represented, with the range of local musicians heading down running the full gamut. Flocking south to Austin, Texas will be local flavors of hip hop, dream pop, avant, freak folk, spazz rock, club, and bit-pop.

SXSW attendees can look forward to highly anticipated new music showcased by Beach House, and performed by the teen club phenom that is Rye Rye. Below lies your friendly guide to Baltimore's representation of official shows at the annual music conference, complete with dates and venues. Start packing folks:

Adventure:

Thursday, March 19 10:00 p.m.

Volume (614 E 6th St)

Beach House:

Thursday, March 19 1:00 a.m.
Volume (614 E 6th St)

Friday, March 20 8:45 p.m.
Cedar Street Courtyard (208 W 4th St)

Saturday, March 21 6:00 p.m.
Auditorium Shores Stage (Lady Bird Lake) (Riverside Dr & S 1st St)

Blaqstarr:

Saturday, March 21 12:00 a.m.

Friends (208 E 6th St)

Chavy Boys:

Saturday, March 21 1:00 a.m.
Friends (208 E 6th St)

Ecstatic Sunshine:

Thursday, March 19 8:00 p.m.
Volume (614 E 6th St)

Lesser Gonzalez Alvarez:

Thursday, March 19 9:00 p.m.
Volume (614 E 6th St)

Jana Hunter:

Saturday, March 21 8:10 p.m.

Beauty Bar Backyard (617 E 7th St)

Ponytail:

Saturday, March 21 12:00 a.m.

Club de Ville (900 Red River St)

Rye Rye:

Wednesday, March 18 8:00 p.m.

La Zona Rosa (612 W 4th St)

Thursday, March 19 12:00 a.m.
Aces Lounge (222 E 6th St)

Peace 2008.

With a chance to finally catch my breath, figured I'd let the world know I'm still kickin. Rejoicing the completion of my collegiate career, last Thursday and Friday nights were packed with keyboards, booze, dancing, guitars, and visualistic stimuli at Round Robin.

Eyes Night sported a look into what to expect from some of Bmore's best for next year, with Beach House, Lesser Gonzalez Alvarez, and Jana Hunter all playing some new tunes. Santa Dads were beat boxing bluegrass at its best and Teeth Mountain created sounds that must be the envy of hippy drum cirlces worldwide.

Feet Night was a spastic affair that offered congo lines, spilled drinks, and some of Baltimore's most fun acts. Future Islands exhibited why they are a taste best served live, and were the evening's high point with a bill that boasted Dan Deacon, Deathset, Adventure, and Double Dagger.

Brimming with politcial hope and economic demise, 2008 also featured some pretty incredible music. I can already predict entries for my local top 10 of 2009, with Animal Collective's confusingly named Merriweather Post Pavillion LP being released January 6th and Dan Deacon's Bromst seeing daylight in March.

Look forward to new features on the site next year, including dual air bags, Oregon Trail graphics, and even a hot tub. Also expect exclusive premieres from The Humblebees and Brian Adam Ant's new ensemble.

Top 10 Bmore Albums of 2008

From folk to electro-punk to tribal drum jams, 2008 was another solidly diverse year for local releases. With other mediums bound to be sharing their favorite LPs of the year, thought I would focus on just what Baltimore had to offer.

70% of the list just so happens to be Round Robining at the event pictured to the left. December 18 and 19 at Sonar. Check my list below...

10. Yukon - Medallion EP

9. Teeth Mountain - Self Titled

8. Arbouretem (split 12" with Pontiak) - Kale

7. The Deathset - Worldwide

6. Adventure - Self Titled

5. Wilderness - (k)no(w)here

Originally an accompaniment score to an art exhbit, this is by far the bands most cohesive release yet. Slow-core moans paired with monstrous drums give way to unexpected quiet moments of pure sonic bliss.

4. Future Islands - Wave Like Home

In addition to one of my favorite album covers of the year, the highly anticipated debut full length delivers on sound as well. All in all, it's poppy new wave punk at its best while still leaving room to improve.

3. Lesser Gonzalez Alvarez - Why is Bear Billowing?

I've already compared Lesser to the likes of Nick Drake and early Devandra Banhart, which in my opinion is some pretty high praise. His debut trickles along with simple sounds that elude to complex ideas. An under-the -radar artist that deserves far more of your attention.

2. Ponytail - Ice Cream Spiritual

Themes of pixie stix and finger painting combine with mind-numbing rock and roll riffs to make the band's second LP something unlike anything else. This is an album that needs to be heard in it entirety, which I'm sure is typically not an issue for most who give it a go.

1. Beach House - Devotion

Beach House are epic. Paving the way for even more spacey dream pop gems that were released this year (Fight Bite, Grouper), the duo seems to be making lives more beautiful all over the world. After another tour heading into 2009, Victoria and Alex have hopes to record the third LP this winter.

New Local Videos x2

Two fresh new videos from Bmore Carpark artists hit the interwebs this week. Beach House continues their dream pop world domination by providing accompanying visuals to the single off the "Used to Be" 7 inch. Shots from the video seem to illustrate themes of beautiful loneliness, as the song was written while touring.

Lesser Gonzalez Alvarez released his first video, the single off his highly underrated debut LP Why is Bear Billowing? "The Letter B" features a picnic packed with blood, charred American flag toothpicks, and fruit. Catch both of these artists December 18th on Eyes Night of the Baltimore Round Robin homecoming show at Sonar.

Lesser Gonzalez Alvarez Album Droppage

Lesser Gonzalez Alvarez creates art. His visual art is displayed above, and more can be found here. Lesser's aural works have been collected on Carpark's Why is Bear Billowing?. The album consists of just him and his guitar, and proves to be all that is needed.

The LP swoons along simplistically leaving behind aftertastes of Devendra Banhart and the late Nick Drake. Often consumed by music that combines every genre possible, its always nice to hear songs that aren't hidden behind any unnecessary layers.

Lesser Gonzalez Alvarez has gotten some national press as of late, some of which appears to be confused. Pitchfork "reviewed" the album a few weeks back. However half the piece was spent claiming that Lesser did not fit in with his peers, referring to "the wham city membership card he carries."

Since when do art collectives have to contain bands that all sound the same? And since when did such collectives have membership cards? Is this similar to the one I got when I joined the Bo Knows fan club on the back of my Wheaties box in 1989? Who knows.

I do know that Lesser will be touring the U.S. throughout September with Jana Hunter, and I also know that I couldn't think of a more perfect fall show to attend.

Lesser Gonzalez Alvarez and Small Sur Release Party

Jana Hunter heads the bill for Lesser Gonzalez Alvarez and Small Sur's CD release party at the 2640. Should obviously be a pretty stellar lineup. Hopefully this will not be a repeat of the chat-happy whartscape crowd.

Whartscape Hotness

Friday night's set in the steamy old church went as imagined, but at times not withstanding excessive verbal socialization throughout parts of the crowd. Highlights that I caught included Lesser Gonzalez Alvarez, Golden Age, Arbouretem, Jana Hunter, and Beach House. Lesser Gonzalez, to the left, may have possibly written some of the most preeminent folk songs of recent memory. The LP drops September 9th.

Jana Hunter had the task of playing the middle stage before the headliners took the main stage. Despite Dan Deacon repeatedly reminding people to put aimless conversation to rest throughout the evening, people continued to suck. Jana still sounded great, and obviously needed to be performing on the main or back stage.

Beach House filled the space with sounds that made it impossible for even the most ignorant of folk to gab to their neighbors about ice cream and shoes. They were loud, they were into it, and as usual their familiar sounds resonated otherworldly.

Friday @ 2640

This Friday has the potential to be one of the most aurally stimulating sets of the upcoming Whartscape weekend. I saw Beach House open up for Grizzly Bear at the space last year, and the high brick ceilings of the old church hugged and echoed Victoria's voice with luminous results. Expect similar brilliance in a few days, with a full house of onlookers reaping the benefits.

Another Friday night highlight, Lesser Gonzalez Alvarez's first release is due out on September 9th. Expect to hear future praise of the LP on this site. It's going to be titled Why is Bear Billowing?, and will be released by Carpark. Check out his curiously awesome artwork here.

Baltimore by way of Texas songstress Jana Hunter will also grace the sanctuary's presence. Her LP was one of my favorite albums of last year, with folksy sounds of pure beauty from start to finish. There's No Home was released on Devendra Banhart's label Gnomonsong. Please indulge in her highly recommended Daytrotter session.