Celebration Microshow

A couple weeks ago Mobtown Studios hosted a special performance by Celebration, part of their awesome Microshow series that happens once a month. 5/6 of the current full Celebration lineup performed, but did so in a stripped-dowb acoustic fashion. The result was almost 40 minutes of some of the most elegant and pristine sounding Celebration jams to ever grace our presence. Here's a brand new song called "Only The Wicked"...



In addition to breaking out some older songs like "Pressure", and some current ones from the forthcoming Hello Paradise LP like "Open Your Heart", a handful of never before heard songs made their debut. It was a chance to see the future of the Electric Tarot, and boy does it's fortune sound impressive. This one's called "Don't Stop Dreaming"...



A nine song set was played, and the whole thing is available to hear in full over at Mobtown Studios. I recently wrote a more detailed piece on this show and my relationship with Celebration, which you'll be able to read on Thursday over at What Weekly.

Celebration's new LP is called Hello Paradise, and is available in about a week or so.

Mobtown Microshows

Our neighbors, Mobtown Studios, are a friendly little recording studio headed by Matthew Leffler-Schulman. Most recently, they're responsible for the daunting task of recording the entire NOVO Festival (for your downloading pleasure over on Aural States), which included yet another breathtaking set by Dustin Wong.

However, in-house they've been running their Mobtown Microshow series that has been on fire as of late. The series consists of a private show inside their Charles Village studio, where the performance is taped and released via their site. Since January they've hosted Secret Mountains, Mr. Moccasin, and most recently Rapdragons.

The Rapdragons show was of particular note, as Nick Often and Greg Ward lined up quite the supporting cast to help out with songs off of their upcoming Featuring Baltimore release. The session included Dustin Wong lending his guitar chops to "Early For Work", Aran from AK Slaughter guest rapping on "Rap’n'Roll", Future Islands fronter Sam Herring throwing down his vocal flow on "Gotta Go", and a couple fellows from Secret Mountains helping out with "Come Harvest".

It looks like Mobtown's got a fine list of upcoming microshows, including one with Weekends May 13... right around when Strange Cultures should be dropping. Here's their schedule until October, all shows are free but RSVP is requested due to small seating capacity.

• June 10: The Manly Deeds
• July 8: Yukon
• August 12: Leisure Icons
• September 9: We Used To Be Family
• October 14: A Cat Called Cricket