Orange Twin Label to Start Conservation Community
Man, hippies are awesome

Some labels are content with modest periphery pursuits-- hosting a club night, printing some t-shirts, rallying a street team-- while a few have substantially grander designs.

Upping the ante set by Omaha's Saddle Creek-- who, as reported in August, have a serious civic project in the works-- Athens, Georgia's Elephant 6-affiliated Orange Twin imprint has just received the go-ahead from the city and surrounding county's mayor to embark on an ambitious community endeavor.

In the works for some time now, the Orange Twin Conservation Community will consist of "a 155 acre pedestrian-based intentional community of homes and common spaces clustered in two villages amid farmland and forest" just a few miles outside Athens, according to Orange Twin's Laura Carter (who also plays in Elf Power and several other E6 acts, including Neutral Milk Hotel when that band actually exists). [MORE...]

MP3s: Amy Winehouse: "Rehab (Hot Chip remix)", "You Know I'm No Good (ft. Ghostface Killah)"

Amy Winehouse is terrible. TERRIBLE. For some reason, the singer-songwriter is swimming in praise over in her native England, and her second album, Back to Black, went to number 3 there. (It's coming out in America on Universal Republic in March 2007, so watch out.)

Basically she sounds like a street-smart version of Joss Stone. (Not that we in any way needed a street-smart version of Joss Stone.) To extremely confused people, this means she's comparable to Billie Holiday and Lauryn Hill.

Anyway, Amy Winehouse has somehow hooked up with a few pretty cool folks. Hot Chip remixed her hit single "Rehab" (produced by Mark Ronson), and it's pretty much the best Hot Chip remix ever. This is because it takes an awful, awful song and makes it actually enjoyable. They stretch the track out to almost twice its length, adding an intro and outro of bells and stomps and a dude intoning "hey" over and over again. Of course, these are the best parts of the song, because Amy Winehouse isn't singing.

Ghostface Killah seems to have taken a liking to Winehouse's song "You Know I'm No Good" (from Back to Black), as he rhymes over the "bluesy", Ronson-produced cut on his forthcoming album More Fish, and loans a verse to another version of the song, which can be downloaded below.

Ghostface is in fire-breathing mode here, his intensity increasing with every verse, as he chews out a nasty girl who tried to play him with lines like "you need to just walk away like Kelly Clarkson". When alternating with the choruses, it sounds like he's telling Amy Winehouse to fuck off. Which is exactly what she should be told.

Thurston Moore's ATP Festival Launches Tonight
Sonic Youth, Stooges, Deerhoof, Gang of Four, Dinosaur Jr., Nurse With Wound play this weekend in England

All Tomorrow's Parties are happening today. And tomorrow (December 9), and the next day (December 10).

ATP's Thurston Moore-curated Nightmare Before Christmas fest (taking place at Butlins Minehead in Somerset, England) has finally rolled around, and if you a) live in the UK, b) are in your right mind, and c) already bought a ticket (since it's sold out), you're probably boiling over with excitement right about now.

As previously reported, lineup standouts include Sonic Youth (duh), Iggy & the Stooges, dkt/MC5 feat. Mark Arm, Deerhoof, Dinosaur Jr., Melvins, Sun City Girls, Six Organs of Admittance, Nurse With Wound, Be Your Own Pet, Wolf Eyes, Jackie-O Motherfucker, Wooden Wand, Sunburned Hand of the Man, Bardo Pond, Charalambides, Magik Markers, Negative Approach, Prurient, No Neck Blues Band, Flipper (with Krist Novoselic!), and the newly added Bark Haze (a collaboration between Thurston Moore, Gown, and Pete Nolan), Comets on Fire, Mats Gustaffson + EYE (that would be EYE Yamataka of Boredoms), and more.

So basically, every noise-rock band ever.

For the full lineup, head here. [MORE...]

Frank Black Preps "Winter" CD/DVD, Shares Videos

I'm dreaming of a Black Christmass, and it looks like my wish will come true just in time for the holidays. On December 18, Frank Black will release a limited edition CD/DVD by the, um, interesting title above.

Why the double-"s"? Black explained in a press release, "My father always encouraged me to one day put out a Christmas album, which I always found a bit strange, since he was a self-declared pagan. But, I guess by 'Christmas', he meant winter. And it always sort of bothered me that that extra 's' got dropped off of Christmas."

Yeah, we don't know what he's talking about either.

The UK release (no word on a U.S. version yet) will only be available by mail order through Cooking Vinyl, though it may be out in stores at some point in the future.

The album, produced Myles Mangino, features several live acoustic tracks recorded on Black's 2006 summer tour, as well as five studio cuts done in hotel rooms and Hartford, CT's Planet of Sound Studio.

A DVD including footage from one of the aforementioned summer shows will be packaged with the album, giving fans seven new songs altogether.

Videos for "Do What You Want Gyaneshwar" and "Don't Get Me Wrong" have popped up on YouTube and, according to the fansite FrankBlack.net, are reportedly slated for inclusion on the DVD.

Unfortunately, "Gyaneshwar" is extremely pixelated and blurry here, but we can tell you that it is fast-paced and family-oriented. "Don't Get Me Wrong" switches between high-contrast video of the Pixies frontman strumming his guitar (his head blends in with the white background, and it makes him look like an alien) and creepy clips of a shirtless, heavily eyeliner'd Black resting on what might be a silk teal pillow. Yikes.

[MORE...]

Exclusive: Camera Obscura Tour Away Winter Woes
Joined by Essex Green, Portastatic

Consider: Camera Obscura's Tracyanne Campbell can't see farther than her nose at this moment, and given the winter chill, you pretty much can't feel your nose at this moment. Clearly, the stars are telling you to go see Camera Obscura this frigid season, and as luck would have it the wistful Glasgow sextet has just announced its intent to get out of the country for real with an extensive North American tour.

The band behind this year's quite charming Let's Get Out of This Country-- with whom you are now intimately acquainted-- hits the road beginning January 17, with Merge labelmates the Essex Green (touring behind this year's Cannibal Sea) providing support for a bunch of dates on the Eastern half of this continent. Portastatic-- who, like, totally copied their fellow Merge-rs by also dropping a full-length in 2006 (Be Still Please)-- join our Glaswegians for a final stretch down the West Coast. [MORE...]

Video: Senior Citizens Sing Sonic Youth

Sonic Youth's songs have been covered by everyone from Mudhoney to Elf Power to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but Young @ Heart's version of "Schizophrenia" from 1987's Sister is, I declare, the greatest Sonic Youth cover I've ever heard.

Young @ Heart is a group of elderly people from Massachusetts who perform covers of popular songs. In the past, they've done the Rolling Stones, the Clash, and even Outkast. This clip comes from a British documentary about the chorus.

Never in my life did I ever imagine I'd watch a senior citizen sing the words "Her brother says she's just a bitch / With a golden chain" in a very serious, very concerned vibrato. Never did I think I'd see two geriatric women do a call-and-response take on Kim Gordon's verse. Or hear the noise breakdown turned into a chorus of ascending "ahhs" and staccato laughs.

But I just did.

(Thanks to Fluxblog via WFMU's Beware of the Blog.)

Cloud Room Singer Loses Gear in Apartment Fire
Reminds the rest of us to think twice before leaving portable appliances plugged in while away

Around 7 p.m. on November 14-- five hours before his birthday the next day-- mysteriously named Cloud Room lead singer J's Williamsburg apartment burned down. According to Jen Carlson, a friend of the band, "Apparently, a power surge in the building's electrical somehow turned on the [plugged in but turned off] space heater."

In an email to Carlson, J explained the situation:

"I don't really care about most of my stuff, but we'd been recording our next album just on our own in my apartment, and almost all of our amps, instruments, cables/mics/stands, Austrian jaw harp, ukelin, etc. blah blah blah, and my new MacBook melted. But as I was coming home from work after getting the call about the fire, I said my agnostic prayers that my little cat Wicked Annabella/Mipu/Midget-Puma survived and that our hard drive with all the new music survived.

"The cat jumped about 20 feet into the neighbor's yard and was okay. The hard drive and computer are going to the doctor's today...fingers crossed. Syd Butler, the bassist for Les Savy Fav [and head of Frenchkiss Records], is our and the Hold Steady's landlord and is a very cool man. I think he's gonna give me a lot of Fav tees to wear." [MORE...]

Video: M.I.A. and Timbaland in the Studio

There's a look Timbaland gets in his eyes when he's in the studio. There's a variety of looks, actually, and they come in varying shades of confidence, from celebration (i.e. "Can you believe how great I am right now?") to defiance (i.e. "You really think it's a good idea to challenge me on this one?").

There's plenty of the latter in these two clips of the man in the studio with M.I.A., who's clearly intimidated and trying to impress.

In the first clip, they watch a bit of Rick Ross' performance on what looks to be a BET awards show, and they're both unimpressed. Cut to a conversation about Justin Timberlake, in which Timbaland calls him "the white black boy." The conversation then veers to personal history, and when Maya tells him she's only been doing music for two years, he says, "You're a baby." She replies by explaining, "It took me ages to get here," to which he responds, "How many ages?"

The second clip is a little more chaotic. She plays some of her own beats for him while it sounds like he's occasionally playing around on his own keyboard at the same time. When she's finished, Timbo playfully states, "You don't have what I have. I hate to just bust your little bubble."

Since the previously reported original clip went down so quickly, it would be a good idea to watch these now while you still can.

Part 1:



Part 2:

Gang Starr Release Best Of CD/DVD

Gang Starr don't have as singular a career-defining album as Straight Outta Compton, but like N.W.A, they do already have a (very good) hits collection-- Full Clip: A Decade of Gang Starr-- that makes Virgin/EMI's forthcoming Mass Appeal: The Best of Gang Starr a little redundant.

Like N.W.A's recently reported The Strength of Street Knowledge, however, Mass Appeal is also a little redeemed by the inclusion of a DVD with 11 music videos.

In fact, Mass Appeal shares quite a bit with the N.W.A collection, like a release date (December 26), a liner-note writer (Soren Baker), and a two-format release (CD only and CD with DVD). We just hope that the music will be different.

The Mass Appeal CD will also include two bonus tracks, originally from soundtracks and the Japanese version of Gang Starr's last album, 2003's The Ownerz. [MORE...]

Boredoms Get Back to Their Super Roots
Reissues set for Feb; Eye gives "77 Drum" another go

Like a possessed drum circle conjuring UFOs with furious aplomb-- at least in their present live incarnation-- Boredoms are pretty much the most exhilarating weirdos you'll ever witness. Led by the sorta mysterious "Eye", Japan's premier noise experimentalists celebrate their 20th anniversary next year, and in honor of the occasion, they're taking a look back at what their noise-making hath wrought.

As previously reported, Vice Records will reissue most of Boredoms' Super Roots series-- making several titles available in the U.S. for the very first time. If you went poking around for them at your favorite indie record shop this fall, however, and came up empty-handed, that's because Vice pushed the release date back. The reissues, the original Super Roots (1994) now among them, drop in two waves: 1, 3, and 5 on January 23 and 6, 7, and 8 on February 20. And because they're just so damn ridiculous, we've done you the pleasure of reprinting all the tracklists below.

And because we know you're going to ask: Super Roots 2 is a limited edition 3" CD that apparently doesn't warrant reissue, and Super Roots 4 does not exist, because the number 4 is, in fact, evil.

What's more, Boredoms are said to be working on Super Roots 9, and will compile the entire series, along with the video for "Super Go!!!!!", as Super Roots 10.

Finally, Eye hopes to take another stab at his "77 Drum" art installation/performance piece, originally slated to open this year, but later cancelled. It's now billed as a single performance with Boredoms and 77 drummers, and will go down July 7 in New York City. As previously mentioned, Eye has some slightly less ambitious art showing right now as part of that city's "Music Is a Better Noise" exhibit at the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, which runs through January 8. [MORE...]

Chris Martin, Streets, Kaiser Chiefs DJ on BBC
So do Snow Patrol, Editors, the Zutons, the Young Knives, and more

Radio 1's Zane Lowe is taking a short break from the world of broadcasting, and has recruited a celeb-packed cast to guest-DJ his BBC show from January 2-18. The show is on the air from 7-9pm.

Highlights include Kaiser Chiefs' Rick Wilson and Nick Hodgson on January 2, Editors on January 3, the Young Knives on January 4, Mike Skinner on January 8, Snow Patrol on January 10, the Zutons on January 17, and, wrapping up the series, Chris Martin on January 18. Time to start thinking up radio names, dudes. DJ Beach Chair comin' atcha.

For a full schedule, go here.

Supersystem Call It Quits

Supersystem, the NYC/DC four-piece dance-punk attack, have broken up. The goodbye follows their sophomore LP, A Million Microphones, which landed on Touch & Go in August, as well as a tour in support of that album.

A statement on Supersystem's website reads, "After 10 years, the members of Supersystem/El Guapo have decided to disband. From the bottom of our hearts, we would like to thank everyone at Touch and Go, Dischord, Flower, Locusta, and others too numerous to name here for all your help over the years.

"Most of all we would like to thank everyone who supported us, saw us play, listened to our music, set up a show, played a show with us, or otherwise participated in making our time as a band really awesome. We appreciate it and will miss you!"

But the now ex-Supersystem members have no plans to leave the music biz. Justin Moyer will continue on as DeSoto act Edie Sedgwick, as well as a member of the trio Antelope.

Pete Cafarella will devote his full attention to Shy Child, who currently have three gigs scheduled in Europe: one at London, England's Forum on December 8, another at Rennes, France's Trans Musicale Festival on December 9, and the last at London's Fabric on December 22. They're expected to wrap up work on a new record by Christmas, and plan to release a single in early 2007.

Rafael Cohen is working with Molly Schnick, formerly of Out Hud, and finally, Joshua Blair will continue on with Orthrelm.

Do you have a news tip for us? Anything crazy happen at a show you attended recently? Do you have inside info on the bands we cover? Is one of your favorite artists (that's not somebody you know personally) releasing a new record you'd like to see covered? You will remain completely anonymous, unless we are given your express permission to reveal your identity. (Please note that publicists, managers, booking agents, and other artist representatives are generally exempt from this rule, but will also be granted anonymity if requested.)