Pylon's Awesome Gyrate Gets Deluxe DFA Reissue
Some might say they really pile on the extras!

Mostly gone but hardly forgotten, Athens, GA's Pylon served as new wave pioneers, post-punk influencers, and all around rock'n'roll dynamos in their heyday. The band-- dormant for nearly two decades save for a few rare appearances in recent years-- will see their debut full-length Gyrate beefed up a bit and re-released (on CD for the first time!) by the superfans at the DFA label October 16.

In addition to the singular Gyrate, DFA have added a heretofore unreleased bonus track, "Functionality", plus the whole of their "Cool"/"Dub" single and the 10 Inch 45 RPM EP to their reissue of the 1980 LP. Brand new liner notes have been written by pals-of-Pylon Michael Stipe, B-52 Fred Schenider, and Gang of Four stickman Hugo Burnham. [MORE...]

Tapes 'n Tapes Play Minneapolis Bridge Benefit

Photos by Kirstie Shanley

Tapes 'n Tapes are among those playing the Transmission Live Bridge Benefit on September 23 at Minneapolis' Fine Line Music Cafe. The show is a benefit for Mercedes Gorden, local friend of the band Jake Rudh's fiancée who suffered ankle, shin, and spine injuries in the I-35 bridge collapse of August 1.

Admission to the benefit requires a $15 minimum donation at the door, and there will also be a silent auction. A portion of the night's proceeds will go to the American Red Cross' Minnesota chapter, with the rest going to help Gorden toward a speedy recovery.

For more information on Gorden's condition and how to help, visit the website Rudh set up for her here.

A Pro Hockey Player, a Noise Label, a Dream Realized

How's this for the next Will Ferrell movie? A professional hockey player grows tired of the usual Nickelback and Bon Jovi pre-game pump up jams and begins surreptitious nightly excursions into the underground psych and noise scenes. While playing for the Red Wings, he attends a Dead Meadow gig in Detroit and there meets an ex-member of the Dirtbombs who used to put out Pavement and Don Caballero records and now works for Warner Bros. The two become friends, gush about Boris and Sunn O))) together, and decide to start a limited-run label specializing in psych/noise releases. Then they live happily ever after.

Also, there's a romantic interest played by Audrey Tautou and a scene where Ferrell accidentally eats a hockey puck while dining at a Tim Hortons. Genius!

Best of all, this one would be Based on a True Story, as the above synopsis more or less tells the tale of upstart Macomb, Michigan imprint Elevation Recordings. The hockey player, Boyd Devereaux, now plays for the Toronto Maple Leafs. The Warner guy, Joe Greenwald, used to run the label Third Gear. And they really did meet at a Dead Meadow show.

Elevation likes releasing things in the EP format and likes to keep those EPs limited to 5,000 copies or less. Thus far they've put out two records: doom-gazers Nadja's Guilted by the Sun EP and psych-rockers Residual Echoes' Firsts EP. Coming soon are EPs from Black Mountain offshoot Blood Meridian, Easy Action (led by Negative Approach frontman/meanest looking dude alive John Brannon), and Wellwater Conspiracy (which includes Pearl Jam drummer Matt Cameron).

While details are still falling into place on the latter two releases, the Blood Meridian EP is tentatively titled Liquidate Paris. It will feature nine songs and will be Elevation's first vinyl release, limited to a mere 500 copies. Label and band hope to have it ready in time for the upcoming Black Mountain tour.

Belle and Sebastian Are Looking for a Few Good Ladies

Belle and Sebastian are a lot of things, but "pursuers of ladies on the internet" seems a trick more apt for Queens of the Stone Age. (Just playing, Mrs. Homme) Still, that's exactly what bandleader Stuart Murdoch appears to be doing with a typically mysterious upcoming project.

Earlier today, Murdoch posted an entry in his diary on the band's website, grumbling about a frosty summer in Glasgow and then spinning a (thinly-veiled, autobiographical?) yarn about a boy, two girls, and the superior summer they spent wasting away the hours playing music. Murdoch alludes to a set of songs written-- but never recorded-- by these characters, which he'd like to complete with the help of the two girls from his story, or, failing the discovery of some sort of tear in the continuum between fantasy and reality, two adequate stand-ins. And that, lassie, is where you come in.

Stuart's looking for females of the tune-carrying persuasion to sign up to iMeem, familiarize themselves with a slightly slowed down take The Life Pursuit's "Funny Little Frog" or the new track "The Psychiatrist is In" (hey, I've heard that somewhere!), and then submit a recording of your karaoke take on the track here. You'll get to be yourself, and you'll get to sing!

Stu's also looking to get a picture of each lady out of it: not for any creepy purpose (we think), but because he's looking to eventually turn this project into a film. Here, for your embedded pleasure, are takes on the tracks with vocals from the "White Collar Boy" single's cover star Catherine Ireton:

Fellas, don't fret: "right now we're looking for the girls," the diary reads, "but the boys may follow." Is Stuart looking to replace Isobel Campbell or that other Stuart? Aren't there already enough people in Belle and Sebastian? Does Stevie Jackson get under everyone else's skin as bad as he does mine?

Ladies, you've got 'til October 1. Thanks to Stereogum for the tip.

LCD Soundsystem's FABRICLIVE 36 Mix Revealed

From the cowbell-laden music they make together, you can probably guess just what kind of stuff LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy and drummer Pat Mahoney might play in a club: a little leftfield this, a little mainstream that, but mostly a whole a lotta disco.

So you'll hardly be shocked while perusing the tracklist for the pair's (previously mentioned) forthcoming FABRICLIVE36 mix, the next installment in the London club's series of, y'know, live mix CDs. Performed with the assistance of a vintage Bozak DJ mixer and cobbled together from the collected-- presumably ginormous-- record bins of Misters Murphy and Mahoney, the twenty-four track comp marries a lot of funky old soul, a smidgen of that IDM, a pinch of thumpa-thumpa, and at least one shout-out to their day job (the "North American Scum" B-side "Hippie Priest Bum-out"). The thing's available from the Fabric label October 2 in the UK, and November 20 in the U.S. from Caroline.

And, since any mention of LCD isn't complete without a reminder about the colossal double bill they'll embark on shortly-- and the split disc resulting from it-- well, you already know. And don't forget about the September 18 release of LCD's A Bunch of Stuff EP, the DFA re-release of 45:33 on November 12, and the UK "Someone Great" single, out October 22. [MORE...]

Islands' Thorburn Works With Les Savy Fav's Butler
And hip-hop producer Daddy Kev

Photo by Nilina Mason-Campbell

Unicorns-spawned pop ragamuffins Islands, responsible for latest year's rather nice LP Return to the Sea (a recipient of the Best New Music seal of approval), have indeed been suspiciously quiet of late.

Sure, there's an Islands track on that David Shrigley-penned compilation, and the promise of an Islands gig during CMJ, but c'mon guys, what have you really been doing?

Well, as it turns out, at least a couple things.

First up is the curiously named Juiced Elfers. The quartet, which popped up at a pair of recent NYC shows headlined by Metric offshoot Bang Lime, consists of ex-Unicorn/Islander Nick Thorburn (aka Nick Diamonds) and ex-Unicorn/ex-Islander Jamie Thompson (aka J'aime Tambeur), along with a chap named Chris Taylor and a certain Syd Butler (whom you may recall from beloved adult contemporary combo Les Savy Fav).

The Elfers have but a handful of songs to their name, though they've also been known to cover the Troggs and the Trashmen. It remains to be seen whether these boys will have a fruitful and enduring career together, but for the moment, alas, there's no further activity on the Juiced Elfers radar.

Butler, Thorburn, Thompson, and members of Wolf Parade and Black Mountain previously collaborated under the bummer of a name Final Fantasy: Online a.k.a. Internet at a McSweeney's-sponsored benefit this past spring.

Thorburn's kept especially busy, as he's also one half of "Hawaii-inspired indie superduo" Reefer (er, not these guys). The other half is noted Los Angeles hip-hop producer Daddy Kev, whose label/distro Alpha Pup served up the quoted descriptor above and will also serve up Reefer's debut mini-album, The Life Narcotic.

The six-song/three-interlude LP, tentatively planned for release in spring/early summer 2008, was in fact recorded in Maui, Hawaii, and L.A. Reefer hope to also release an album of remixes to compliment The Life Narcotic. No word yet on who's contributing.

Along with Reefer, Alpha Pup also has releases in the pipeline from Daedelus, Omid, edIT, Carlos Niño & Gaby Hernandez, Kail, Nocando, and Existero.

Pipettes Announce Tour, North America LP Delayed

North American residents: If you went to the record store/rolled out of bed and loaded up your digital music retailer of choice yesterday looking for a non-import copy of We Are the Pipettes, you already know what we're about to tell you. It's not there yet!

Fortunately, Cherrytree/Interscope has come through with a new North American release date for the Pipettes' debut, and it's not too far away. We Are the Pipettes will now see shelves from Fresno to Halifax on October 2, and the new edition of the album comes with exclusive new tracks "Dance a Boogie" and "Baby, Just Be Yourself". It also has a new cover (see above).

To celebrate their (delayed) arrival, the trio has reloaded on North American tour dates, which begin in Chicago on the new release date. [MORE...]

Beach House Add Dates

With the summer waning, most folks weatherstrip around their windows, chuck all the perishables from the fridge, lock up, and get the heck out of their seasonal domiciles. But when you've determined to live your whole life in a Beach House, whatever the weather, you've gotta go where the vacation takes you.

Following their previously reported stint with their four Friends in Grizzly Bear, Baltimore's mobile Beach House will take in all that Europe has to offer-- for a couple weeks, anyhow. On the Euro dates, the duo share digs with fellow Baltimoreans Arbouretum. [MORE...]

Bloc Party, Justice, Shout Out Louds Play Detour Fest
Also Raveonettes, Teddybears, Cool Kids, Aliens, Busy P, SebastiAn, Kavinsky

A bunch of big bands getting together to play in Southern California isn't exactly a diversion from the beaten path, but LA Weekly's done gone and dubbed it a Detour anyway.

The second annual Detour Music Festival rounds up a few of this year's usual festival suspects-- Bloc Party, Justice, uh, Satellite Party-- and provides them with yet another big stage. Along for the ride are the Shout Out Louds, Turbonegro, Teddybears, the Comedians of Comedy, Augie March, the Raveonettes, the Cool Kids, DJ Mehdi, Autolux, the Noisettes, SebastiAn, Kavinsky, the Aliens, Busy P, So Me, Kinky, and others. Though it seems somehow incongruous to provide directions to something called Detour, the whole shebang is going down October 6 on L.A.'s Main and First Streets. A portion of the profits will go to the L.A. environmental group Tree People.

Sleater-Kinney's Brownstein Does Comedy, Lecture, Ads

Hard to believe it's been over a year now since Sleater-Kinney played their final show (repeat after me: "It's just an indefinite hiatus. It's just an indefinite hiatus."). And indefinite hiatus though it may be, the vacationing members of the iconic trio have found plenty to fill the space between their ("Temporary! Temporary!") break-up and their (fingers-crossed!) barnstorming reunion tour.

Singer/guitarist Carrie Brownstein in particular has been on a roll, having recently reprised her comedic dabblings with "Saturday Night Live" funny guy Fred Armisen. Brownstein, as you may recall, played host Cindy Overton on something called "Boink!", which surfaced on YouTube about a year ago. In the clip, she interviewed former Iraq dictator/Brit-accented rocker Saddam Hussein (played by a quite hilarious Armisen).

Now Brownstein and Armisen have a new bag called "ThunderAnt". Stereogum.com has the first episode, which features a slick stop-motion animated intro soundtracked by a Brownstein/Armisen ditty, and a routine in which the two say "This is nice" at each other a whole lot. Future installments of "ThunderAnt" are expected soon.

Carrie's also a writer, and will read some of her work and discuss music and culture at an upcoming event at NYC university The New School. The talk/reading, moderated by preeminent rock scribe and New School faculty member Greil Marcus, goes down October 10 and is presented by the school's Writing Program. Thanks to Matthew Perpetua for the tip.

Comedy and writing sure don't pay the bills, however, so for that it seems Carrie has turned to advertising. Reader Karissa Sutton points us to the website of prominent Portland ad agency Wieden+Kennedy, which lists Brownstein as one of the overseers of the company's "12" school for young aspiring advertisers. W+K, among other successes, created the Nike slogan "Just Do It" (and "Bo Knows"!!)-- indeed, they're very same Nike-affiliated company that once employed Sleater-Kinney drummer Janet Weiss, who called W+K an "evil advertising empire" in a Hot Rock-era interview with Vancouver wacko Nardwuar. Irony, some would say.

Brownstein's formernot current Sleater-Kinney bandmates, meanwhile, have been making some rumblings of their own. Weiss is now an official member of Stephen Malkmus' Jicks, and she's been touring as part of Bright Eyes' band. Corin Tucker, meanwhile, lent some backing vocals to one of Eddie Vedder's contributions to the Into the Wild soundtrack (Forkcast, yo!).

Anti-Pop Consortium Talk Reunion
Beans readies new solo album

It's been 10 years since they originally formed to "disturb the equilibrium" of hip-hop, and five years since they broke up, citing creative differences after releasing the 2002 album Arrhythmia. But the four members of experimental hip-hop group Anti-Pop Consortium (Earl Blaize, M. Sayyid, Beans, High Priest) have reunited with plans to make a new record.

"The type of music that we're doing, I feel that there's still a place for it," said Earl Blaize in an interview with Pitchfork. "There have been developments within the climate, but it hasn't changed that much. There are ideas that I've had for years that I haven't even tried yet. Over the past few years, technology being what it is, I would have thought that some of those ideas would have been applied, but there's still lots of room to experiment. There are still old ideas I haven't tried that no one else has really reached into yet, so I'm just ready to pull those out. The ideas don't stop coming."

M. Sayyid touched on a more basic motivation for the reunion: "It's about having my friends back. That's the number one motivation: having my peoples back in my zone. It's just a blessing to be back and have your people in the studio. I can't stress that enough to the people out there who supported us, how great we feel just being back, putting bars on things. APC represents not always being inside the lines, represents that creative freedom, so that's another reason why I'm real happy to be back on deck. I'm just really happy to be experimenting and trying new ways to break up flows, to break up productions, having my man Blaize, having Beans in the mix. That gives me an extra push to just kill it."

"Ultimately, time will tell how necessary [the reunion] was," High Priest laughed, "but that's more for the fans [to decide]. For us, it felt right at this time more than any other time previously. It was just a matter of when it all clicked for us."

As for how they plan to avoid the creative differences that accounted for the breakup in the first place, Sayyid said they're choosing not to focus on them. "Everybody's examined their own individual selves as well as their relationships in the collective, and it's just about moving forward, not so much about the past."

"It took us to go through our individual journeys to reach this point, so now when we come back, we're actually going to be a lot stronger," Blaize added.

The four of them met this summer to map out the shape of the new album, but they won't really start work on it until October. And when it comes to titles, release dates, and labels, "everything is preliminary," Beans said. "We don't really know anything about the album [except for] making that shit super hot. The meetings that we've had have been really productive. The things we've discussed that we want to do and that we want to start accomplishing in October, it's pretty exciting shit. I'm not gonna lie, man, it's shit that we've never tried before collectively. It's gonna be ill, man. It's gonna be a good record."

"We're definitely going to expand our vocabulary. It's going to be something that's well worth our catalogue," Blaize said. [MORE...]

Interpol, Beasties, Decemberists on Charity Comp
Also Go! Team, Pipettes, Peter Bjorn & John, Menomena, Band of Horses, Low, Rilo Kiley

The folks at Filter Magazine and emporium of irony Urban Outfitters have once again teamed up for a pretty admirable bit of do-good-ery. They're peddling the fourth installment in the Give.Listen.Help series, a compilation of "new and exclusive music" from the likes of Interpol, the Decemberists, Band of Horses, the Go! Team, Beastie Boys, Rilo Kiley, Peter Bjorn & John, the Pipettes, Low, and a ton of others. Unfortunately, the Cold War Kids cover of "A Change Is Gonna Come" is on there. But hey, it's for a good cause!

$12.88 from the sale of each $14 two-CD set-- available now at any and all UO locations-- will go to Art of Elysium, an organization that promotes art therapy for hospitalized children. [MORE...]

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.)