225's 5 most intriguing CDs of 2009
Very honored to be at the top of this list, and very thrilled that people are listening to a record we're so proud of. Thanks for listening!
225's 5 most intriguing CDs of 2009
Very honored to be at the top of this list, and very thrilled that people are listening to a record we're so proud of. Thanks for listening!
Posted at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Posted at 09:39 AM in Reviews | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
In every society, even one as small and fluid as a city bus, there is an alpha creature. A being who, given a drastic change in circumstances, would rule. If this bus were to take off into space or suddenly bury miles underground, and we all had to live the rest of our lives together, one person would be, at least at first, in control. Sometimes it's not obvious, if the bus is filled with people who normally look furtive for a leader to follow, but sometimes it's deadly obvious.
He stood at the back of the bus, in a slick canvas duster, hair down to his heart, with hands like heavy talons. Standing his bike made of body parts on its heel, he was dripping wet from a rain that no one else seemed to have experienced. As if his entire being were wearing sunglasses, he had turned himself into a reflective spirit. To look at him was to see yourself, weak and shaking and submissive by comparison. So struck by his aura, his stark, commanding presence, I turned to the woman next to me, pointed and said, "He'd be in charge for sure." She took out the white earphone on my side, <<'scuse-moi?>>
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Labels: crunchy, fuzzbox frenzy, RAWK
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Posted by Brad Luttrell on October 8, 2009 · 2 Comments

Frozen Bears is a New Orleans, La. rock band that doesn't screw around.
Frozen Bears knows how to bring the noise, and just let it happen.
They describe their sound as “two animatronic T-Rexes eating reel after reel of cassette tape, washing it down with a bucket of head cleaner, and complaining of indigestion afterwards–all run through an analog delay and a rat pedal.”
I couldn’t agree more.
This is a lo-fi rock band that doesn’t screw around and gives you what you deserve – honest music, screaming guitars, and a barrel of sounds you can’t really make sense of. Pound for pound, Frozen Bear’s newest album, “2000,” can hold its own with garage punk and psychedelic bands anywhere. It’s kaleidoscope of insane guitar effects, crunchy drums and scrambled vocals. I love it.
I missed the “2000″ release, so we’re just going to have to settle for a blog post telling you don’t screw it up, and listen to Frozen Bears. You can get a ton of downloads and streams at their fan site.
Posted at 10:34 AM in Reviews | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
That's a great quote from a review we got this past week from Shock and Yawn magazine, which does a bang up job covering up and coming bands from the South/Mid South areas, as well as regional venues & shows.
A New Band a Day delivers exactly what they promise, with a really cool mixtape themed design--click the link for the nice writeup they give on the Bears
Homemade Lo-fi Psych (three words we love to hear together) is featuring us today--check out other cool bands on this site if this sounds up your alley.
Thanks to everyone who's been kind enough to listen to our music and spread the good word to their readership. I encourage all of our readers to check out these sites and see what enthusiastic music fans are doing to tell people about good music all over the globe. Check 'em out!
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Here's a little video clip showing Adam putting the cover together for "2000." Look for more colors to hit the shelves soon.
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...former bandmates Adam Waller and Kevin Hurstell reconvened in Waller's tiny apartment bedroom to explore the depths of their musical symbiosis on Adam's 4 track (a Tascam Porta 3, pretty much the lowest-end model available). Armed with a couple of guitars, whatever they could find to use as "drums", their Schlitz addled imaginations, and a barely functioning, cheesy guitar effects processor from the early 90s--the Digitech RP-1--Frozen Bears set out to create a 4 track love letter to their record collections, and their imagined record collections in "the future."
In the year 2000...the sword of Damacles was dangling over the head of rock n' roll as we knew it. With club kids, abstract hip hop artists, and the Chemical Brothers set to take over the world, one of the inspirations for the album was the duo's various stabs at the directions rock music could take to compete with the emerging wave of DJ culture that was taking over at the time. Many games of "what if" led to spontaneous creations that the band built into songs as they went along. The result is an intricate mix of stimulating, and stunningly contrasting influences. Danceable beats and loops are merged with raw, stripped down punk energy. Found sound like lectures and sound effects from thrift store LPs are often substituted for vocals. On 2000, the Bears blur the line between art and raw power, taking cues from fellow lo-fi, home taped duos Chrome, Ween, early Pavement, and Tall Dwarfs; psychedelic heroes like the 13th Floor Elevators and The Seeds, the raw garage aesthetic of the Pebbles/Back From the Grave collections; and standbys like Sonic Youth, GBV, the Misfits, Man..or Astroman?, the Stones, early Beat Happening, Flipper, White Light/Heat era Velvets, etc."...Mesmerizing sound regenerating with SONIC YOUTH avant guardedness and eerie background noise combine to scare you into submission. Dirty patterns develop quckly into more paranoid rhythms that make you really wonder what's going on here. Art rock has not been this low-budget in ages and it's raw force is really something to behold for yourself. This stuff worries me. Will I get a disease this year, Or will I conceive a monster that will eat me alive and spit our my underwear? God, I hope neither!"
"Said self-released extended player starts with its poppiest song (“God Is Winded,” nasaled somewhere in the vicinity of, I dunno, Undertones/Jacobites/Soft Boys/Auteurs or whomever) and ends with its two most placid shoestring-budget shoegazers (“Enigma Machine” and “Brown And Chrome”), with neato stuff in between such as the Public Image Ltd. cross—rhythms in “Lost Cosmonauts” and the beautiful bargain-basement Von LMO astronomy-rock of “Trembles And Shambles.” All clearly tossed off with minimal (or, more likely, negative) attention to sound quality, which somehow helps make it all feel wide-eyed, lovable, listenable and just generally mysterious in a way you didn’t know avant-fuzz-drone-whatever bullshit could be anymore. Or at least I sure didn’t."
With the end of the decade coming up, and everybody scrambling to get their definitive lists together, the Frozen Bears invite you to take a listen to part of a time capsule from two obsessed music fans paying tribute to their favorite music at the end of the century, hypothesizing about the coming decade, and the directions raw rock music could take to move a crowd as effectively as any DJ on the planet. Whichever you find more entertaining--the lucky guesses, or the comic flaws--Frozen Bears' 2000 should make for an especially evocative listen as The Aughts come to a close.
You can contact Frozen Bears at frozenbears2@hotmail.com.
Posted at 01:12 AM in Band Bio/2000 Press Release | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Download Frozen Bears 2000 -- 07 How Far Out Are You
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We were very excited to find out recently that we'd landed in WFMU's top 30/Heavy Airplay list for the week of 7/10/09:
WFMU
PO Box 5101
Hoboken, NJ 07030
broadcasting from Jersey City 91.1 FM/90.1 FM
Audio Feed and Archives: www.wfmu.org
Podcasts: podcast.wfmu.org
Blog: blog.wfmu.org
Brian Turner, Music Director
Heavy Airplay, July 10, 2009
THE VASELINES - Enter the Vaselines (Sub Pop)
EAT SKULL - Wild and Inside (Siltbreeze)
THE FRESH & ONLYS - The Fresh & Onlys (Castle Face)
CAMERA OBSCURA - My Maudlin Career (4AD)
TYVEK - Tyvek (Siltbreeze)
EMERALDS - What Happened (No Fun)
CRYSTAL STILTS - Love Is A Wave (Slumberland)
ARITOMO - Fearful Sunshine Filtering Through Foliages (Beta-Lactam
Ring)
MUCK & THE MIRES - Hypnotic (Dirty Water)
MOVIE STAR JUNKIES - Melville (Voodoo Rhythm)
GEORGE-EDWARDS GROUP - 38:38 (Galactic Zoo/Drag City)
RUDIMENTARY PENI - No More Pain (Southern)
SOLE - The Secret History of Underground Rap (No Label)
JACK-O & THE TENNESSEE TEARJERKERS - The Disco Outlaw (Goner)
SPERM - Shh! (DeStijl)
PTERODACTYL - Woldwiild (Brah)
GEN KEN MONTGOMERY - 8-Track Magic II (AIF Sound Art)
FROZEN BEARS - 2000 (No Label)
COMETA FEVER - Dead Light (What the...?)
PURLING HISS - Purling Hiss (No Label)
SATO YUKIE - Solo 1977-2000 (Jabinado Art Music)
VARIOUS - The World's Lousy With Ideas Vol. 7 (Almost Ready)
DIRECTING HAND - What Put the Blood (Dancing Wayang)
LOS STRAITJACKETS - The Further Adventures of Los Straitjackets (Yep
Roc)
VARIOUS - The Best of Kayden & Merben (Funkadelphia)
HAUSCHKA - Versions of the Prepared Piano (Karaoke Kalk)
ZOLA JESUS - Tsar Bomba (Troubleman Unlimited)
WILLIE LANE - Known Quantity (Cord Art)
KAA ANTILOPE / LUC VAN ACKER - VPRO RadioNome (Enfant-Terrible)
CHRISTINE SEHNAOUI & MICHEL WAISVISZ - Shortwave (Al Maslakh)
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