Goldkicked

Hey all, first off, I'm looking into the server issues that I've been having right now, so it will be a little while before I return to posting mp3s, which is unfortunate, because I've got quite a few I'm really excited about coming up. However, when the space issue is fixed, all of the past mp3s I've posted (including the unreleased Black Mountain, Daddy's Hands, Sunset Rubdown mp3s and Wolf Parade, Atlas Strategic and Chet will be back up... At that point, I'll make one post referring to all the mp3s and previous posts, so you can sweep in and grab what you've been waiting for (and I know a bunch of you have) without having to endure jerk-off critiques by me, that is, unless you want to. So, once again, you will be able to come and download all of that stuff you've been pestering me for! Okay, hope you're all well...

goldkicks@gmail.com

YeShakingKing.

Yikes, it's been quite a while since I updated this... Unfortunately something happened with the server space that I had been storing mp3s on, which put me into a deep funk, because I wasn't going to be able to have any Daddy's Hands songs for you guys, or anybody else's songs, for that matter.

Duchess Says who systematically destroyed every other band at last Saturday's bill, including (in my opinion) New York's Japanther, return to the stage tonight to perform with Memphis' Lost Sounds. I recall picking up their album Black Wave out of curiousity in a bargain bin a couple of years ago in Victoria, and it was nothing if not embarassing and rightly relegated to the bargain bin, but perhaps they've improved (they did put out a split with The Vanishing)...
Duchess Says, Lost Sounds and Moustache at The Toc Toc, 6091 Ave. du Parc. Doors @ 9pm.

Alright, I downloaded the Johnny Boy single You Are The Generation That Bought More Shoes and You Get What You Deserve off of another mp3 blog a while back, and despite the uncomfortable similarities between Johnny Boy's and U2's schlocky basslines, and the weird feeling that I get that if they ever manage to get over here they're going to be about as successful as Chumbawamba... Yes, despite all that, I'm really enjoying it - it's a pretty good morning song, damned epic enough not to bring you down but layered with enough studio trickery to keep you interested... It slipped into Pitchfork's top 100 singles of 2000-2004 at #95.

Johnny Boy - You Are The Generation... (XFM Version).mp3

Above is a low quality version of the single that Johnny Boy recorded at the British radio station XFM...

Ahhhh yes, I've just recalled that I initially downloaded that song off of Fluxblog, and it's still up there, so I'd recommend downloading it...

Ex-Dead Teenager & Black Mountain

Prior to Stephen McBean and Joshua Wells' involvement with the underappreciated touring troubadours Jerk With A Bomb and just after the demise of Gus, the two were members of Ex-Dead Teenager, a post-punk mish-mash of disco beats, synthesizer and tremolo-clipped guitar that pre-dated much of the revivalist stuff that would climb above-ground a couple of years later (much of it in the region, such as Hot Hot Heat, Radio Berlin, The Detroit Deathwatch and The Red Light Sting with close ties to the group). Victims for being either too ahead of the curve, or too unconcerned to care, probably the latter, the group put out two self-released cassettes (appeared on the infamous Go! compilation, which featured Danko Jones, the worst Filipino in modern rock music) and faded into the background, spoken of highly in certain areas in BC, the releases and videos of the band coveted by nerds such as myself. The song below is from the second self-released cassette, passed on to me by my friend Rick O'Dell.*

Ex-Dead Teenager - Bon Scott.mp3

And now the zeitgeist has caught up to Stephen McBean's current position on the astral plane, as lead songwriter for Black Mountain and Pink Mountaintops, both. Below's an unreleased Black Mountain track, and no, it's not a Judas Priest cover.

Black Mountain - Tyrant.mp3UNRELEASED


* Ex-Dead Teenager also spawned S.T.R.E.E.T.S. and Mercury The Winged Messenger.

Wolf Parade!

CBC Radio 3's most recent online edition, which will be replaced by a new one tomorrow, has a story on Wolf Parade to accompany the In Sessions tracks they recorded a little while back. It's also revealed that they've recorded a Blackout Beach song for an upcoming compilation to be released by the folks at The Believer magazine. (Blackout Beach being the solo vehicle for Frog Eyes frontman Cary Mercer...) Coupling this news with Dave Eggers adoration of The Arcade Fire and Tracy Maurice's design & illustration skills, means only one thing - a McSweeneys special "Montreal" issue is in the works. Hardy har har.

Victoria's Chet

The heart & soul of Victoria's Chet are Ryan Beattie and Patrick Beattie: brothers and professionally polite gentlemen-about-town... Ryan (guitar, vocals) works as a bartender at Logan's (formerly Thursdays), the only licensed venue of note in Victoria, and Patrick (organ/vocals) has recently been signed on to work at Ditch Records, the only record store of note in Victoria, and for the past two years they've pursued a . There are similarities in Ryan's voice to both Ron Sexsmith and Will Oldham, but Ryan pushes his voice to soaring falsetto heights, a more tuneful contrast to Cary Mercer of fellow Victorians Frog Eyes. Hank Pine plays cello and novice Alison Therriault (per)cusses...

Chet - Track 1.mp3

This is the first track from their forthcoming album - a dynamic and explosive charge out of the starting gates...

Chet - Pillow Talk In The Flames.mp3

The 8th track on Chet's second album Kauai, named after a Hawaiian island, will be released later this year by Vancouver's Hive-Fi Recordings, the label associated with recording studio juggernaut The Hive. Ryan knocks off solo sturm-und-drung stuff in his spare time, and Patrick spends some time with Bird Sounds of Canada and psych-all-star-ensemble Lakeboat. Their first album was self-released.
Chet's New Music Canada site
April 2004 interview with Chet, Discorder Magazine

---

Also, thanks for the kind words from GreenIdeas and Said The Grammophone both... I suppose I'll have to start spell-checking now!

Panties. Boys. Shorts. Boys.

A couple of years ago, a Victorian cartoonist prodigy released a handsomely packaged CD of lo-fi bedroom bumps and grinds layered with Casio spread, effectively kick-starting a one-person campaign of hype in the area. At the time, I heralded Pantyboy as the third or fourth coming of the Messiah (at least the last one since the 19th century, not including the Jehovah Witness' close-calls and also rans), regarded his melodies as sublime and his lyrics as the whisperings of heaven. And then I saw him perform with a backing ensemble at Thursdays. With a gentleman in a poncho, who hogged the microphone and made uncomfortable jokes. I left, disappointed, ridiculed by my friends for my false prophecizing. And now, looking back on it, the first Unicorns performances in Victoria were somewhat disastrous, or at least, characterized by stop-start dynamics with more of an emphasis on the "stop", too. Pantyboy just had to harness that nervous energy, bundle it up and spurt it out like church picnic mustard. And he might just have done so at this point, but I'm on the other side of the country and I can't tell.

Pantyboy - Razor Sharp, No Brakes.mp3

This song's from that album Orgy of the Senses, the first thing I heard before the magic died. More information and MP3s are on his website, including a preview of his new video-game, as well as links to associated projects like Elephant Island and the only private eye alligator comic around Strange Journey.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

ADDENDA: Regarding yesterday's posts, I stumbled upon the newest S.T.R.E.E.T.S. website, which is quite a bit more advanced than their previous "flaming eyeball" and bloody font website... There are 4 mp3s up there, too.

Sunset Rubdown

Hopefully 2005 will be Global Symphonic's year - the West Coast label (jointly run by Carlos and Sean, in Victoria and Vancouver respectively) has been putting out a steady stream of quality releases by leftfield and pop-skewed artists for a number of years now, and despite a number of critically-heralded groups calling that label home (Frog Eyes, The Organ, 80's skate n' thrash revivalists S.T.R.E.E.T.S., Radio Berlin and A Luna Red) and their accompanying string of releases, they've been unable to break it as a cult label along the same lines as other West Coast projects like GSL or Dim Mak. It might be because the groups have less of the reek of novelty act or a major band association (Omar from the Mars Volta is now a co-owner of GSL), or because American distribution is a tough nut to crack, regardless it's a shame, and I imagine a series of stellar releases in the next coming months might raise the label's profile, including the Primes/Bakelite split 12", and the Book of Lists album...

All that being a pre-amble though, the release that will undoubtedly receive the most attention at first, and rightfully so, is the Sunset Rubdown album... Spencer Krug, vocalist and keyboardist of Montreal's Wolf Parade and currently in Europe supporting the Destroyer/Frog Eyes tour, recorded 12 tracks last year of Eno-esque vibrations, drones and well-crafted songs and released it in a pretty damn limited package of 3 mini-CDs. (I, and many others, managed to catch him opening up for Wolf Parade at last year's show in Spencer's loft) Global Symphonic will put this out later this year - I'm not quite sure if its going to utilize the same packaging, we'll see. Below you'll find the first track, propelled by that same overdriven Yamaha keyboard, and peppered with sparse percussion, ending with a key-shifting chorus and arpeggio.

Sunset Rubdown - Untitled Track 1.mp3

AIDS Wolf, Besnard Lakes.

Here are some shots, a couple of weeks old, of AIDSWolf and The Besnard Lakes (who'll be performing at SXSW next month) from their performance at Sala Rosa.

Chloe Lum of AIDS Wolf

Chris Taylor, AIDS Wolf

Jace of The Besnard Lakes

Jeremiah of The Besnard Lakes

BROKEUP.

And speaking of such things, here are some Barley-esque photographs from last night's Break Up Tonight show at the War Gallery, a new space that's opened up on the third floor of a building on lower St. Laurent. The event was well-attended, and despite some spotty sound issues (I'll admit, I was at the helm of the rickety system with two three-inch tall speakers that partially functioned as the PA), everyone had a grand time, the booze sold out and I played Contort Yrself twice...

Impromptu and Out-of-Tune Balladry

Gentleman behind the above...

Owner of Sneaker Freaker, now renamed...

Nathan Barley: In The Juice.

I'm in the middle of watching Chris Morris' new Channel 4 series >Nathan Barley... Admittedly, I hadn't heard of Chris Morris prior to reading something about a tongue-in-cheek special he did on paedophilia. The series is about Nathan Barley, a "self-facilitating media node" (a clueless and clued-in ponce and gizmo fetishist) and Dan Ashcroft, a self-loathing hipster journo who writes and rewrites the codes of "hip" by critiquing the pretentious sorts he sees around him.

Momus wrote about the series, commenting on its awareness of "the cockroach-like unkillability of fop subculture" and identifying the major conflict of the series as being "how to focus on attention-seeking narcissists without validating them beyond their wildest dreams". It strikes me that Dan Ashcroft's character bears many similarites to David Brooks, author of Bobos in Paradise, which, at the time I read it, struck me as a terribly stodgy critique of urban liberals, but now seems to have been a very astute forewarning of what has become, for better or for worse, the standard by which most young urban dwellers judge the standards of their life. Brooks saw Bobos (which isn't the zippiest term) as the convergence of the bohemian and the bourgeoisie, and whereas magazines like The Baffler critiqued that and huffed at the swift and exacting lifestyle and consumption changes that characterize this new animal's raison d'etre, Brooks ended up celebrating it. And perhaps Chris Morris' Nathan Barley series does the same thing - remains to be seen.

Theatre of Pain.

This Wednesday evening, at Saphir (3699 St. Laurent), I'll be DJing along with JRC for the tongue-in-cheek look at invasive media sensationalism and so forth. Given my status as a member of the Gwichen band, perhaps I'll do some Godspeed-like "noble savage" voice-overs on top of stop-start post-rock theatrics.

...And I'm DJing tonight at The War Gallery...

Atlas Strategic! Again!

As promised, here's another mp3 from Atlas Strategic (Dan Boeckner of Wolf Parade's old Victoria-based group), once again from the now out-of-print That's Familiar EP... I believe there are still copies of the first album, Rapture Ye Minions!, available for mail-order from Global Symphonic, and there are tracks available from that release on their New Music Canada website.

Atlas Strategic - The Day It Came To Earth.mp3

Craft, Donkeys, Clothing.

Tonight at The Long Hall (at 450 Beaumont, off of Ave. du Parc), there's an event called The Consistent Variable Project happening, involving a whole swatch of dedicated seamstresses, artists, crafty-types, designers and the sycophants and hang-abouts that populate their lives (myself included)...

I love Dylan Young like the black-spotted brother he is to me, but attaching the moniker "no-wave" to Montreal's finest pre-CEGEPian pop group Donkeyheart may bring out the sorts of people who covet the 1.5 Dancing Cigarettes releases to one of the 40 shows on their hectic Montreal tour. However, according to their blog, one of them has just discovered Nietzsche, it's a confusing time for all and the 21st century is no time for genre squabbles. Prepare for the ubermensch! They're performing tonight at El Salon to benefit Head & Hands. Doors at the usual time, I suspect, wear moustaches and infect thyself with syphilis in preperation.

Hailed by many as the next Donkeyheart, or possibly Telefauna's upstart younger brother, Code Pie mix up the best elements of Yo La Tengo and Bon Jovi. Jersey-Pop Frappe. Hidden In Buildings make you keenly aware of how long you've been standing for, Brian Lipson represents the hope for the future of Earnest Beard Rock (EBR for short), and Deadbush happen to be on the bill, too (and yes, Donkeyheart again!) for yet another Tsunami Relief benefit, this time at the Electric Tractor (6674 de l'Esplanade) on Saturday night.

On Monday, I'll be DJing at the BREAK Up TONIGHT fashion/music/art event, featuring items by Montreal designer Julie Clark (amongst others) at the War Gallery, 3676 St. Laurent. Hike up to the 3rd floor. Doors are @ 8pm.

Turkish Baths and Coming Attractions.

After much searching, an anonymous tipster has revealed to me the location (I suppose I could have looked in the Yellow Pages, nonetheless) of a real, Olde Worlde-style Turkish Bathhouse in Montreal. I will now be spending many countless hours sweating out the booze and indulging in growly discourse with Russian immigrants. Hopefully I won't have to spurn too many sexual advances...

Also, apologies for the sluggish (and sometimes non-existent) downloads on the site and the not-so-frequent posting, but coming up this weekend and throughout next week I'll have a review of the newest Droom album, some of that stuff from Atlas Strategic, a GoGoGoAirheart retrospective, Kosmische Rock mp3s, some interviews and a baker's dozen worth of mp3s from Vancouver and Victoria.

Tracy Maurice

Also, congratulations to Tracy Maurice, who received a Juno nomination for her packaging artwork for the Arcade Fire's debut album. She's up against the packaging for uhh, the most recent Bryan Adams, Avril Lavigne and Jakalope (did you buy that? Have you heard of them?!?!) albums, as well as he of the Roman-esque features (and another Ontario kid) Jesse F. Keeler, from Death From Above.

Arcade Fire - Power Out (demo).mp3

The above was stolen from the Arcade Fire fansite (geezus, kids work quick these days, huh?) Us Kids Know.

Sinoia Caves - Hawkwind - Ethiopiques

Finally, some mp3s for all of you...

Sinoia Caves - Naro Way.mp3

Prior to Jeremy Schmidt's involvement with kraut-rock and (avant? ha!)psychfiends Black Mountain, he released an album under the Sinoia Caves moniker entitled The Enchanted Persuader. There's a very pastoral and rural stream at work here, acoustic guitars over top of ARP synthesizer drones. Schmidt was also a member of Vancouver's under-appreciated stoner/space-rock group Orphan. In the summer of 2003 while I was living in Vancouver I happened to catch one of Jeremy's performances in the opium-poppy filled backyard of a house (now demolished) just off Main. The city was in the middle of its annual fireworks broohaha, which provided the perfect skyline backdrop to the evening. And I wasn't even stoned!

Hawkwind - Space Is Deep.mp3

...And all of that is a perfect segue into everyone's favourite space-rock group, Hawkwind.

Embwa Belew.mp3

To round out the set, here's a track from the third volume of the astonishing Ethiopiques collection, this one specializing in music from between the years of 1969 and 1975, played mostly by members of the police and military bands, who had been exposed to American soul & rock by US Peace Corps volunteers in the country at the time.

Jesus...

There are times when one encounters, on the internet, bold-faced lies and hyperbole and exagerration so foul and terrible and misleading that one has no choice but to break the silence of the keyboard and speak out, decrying the outright stupidity and misanthropic motivation behind such blog posts as this...

The Next Arcade Fire

Despite my Pentecostal upbringing, I do not see in the Arcade Fire the second coming of Christ, and I've never been overcome with any urge to talk in tongues or roll around the floor during their liveshow, nonetheless, the above post is such a blatant fabrication, so demeaning to the Arcade Fire and Wolf Parade both that it must be exposed.

GrapeJuicePlus Blog

And a little bit of a palate cleanser, so I don't end this post on such a sour note, GrapeJuicePlus' another great mp3 blog to check out, there's some tracks from paisley-undergrounders Three O'Clock...

Mp3 Blogs

As I don't have the time to muck about and convert some mp3s until later, below's a list of damn good mp3 blogs...

20jazzfunkgreats

As far as I can tell, this is the only reference to Throbbing Gristle in a blog title around, and they usually post most of the stuff that it's in line with what I'm interested in. It's from Brighton in England, which I wouldn't be able to point out on a map (sadly),

An Idiot's Guide To Dreaming

Another British blog, which is appropriate, because as Robin Simpson said yesterday "the Brits love to gush". Recent posts include Momus, AK Momo, and Afrika Bambaataa, Martin Rev and Boyd Rice. The only people I'd trust to explain what the hell acid-house was.

Spoilt Victorian Child

And yet another British blog, with well-written posts on Malcolm McLaren's "Double Dutch" song, Adam and the Ants, Bow Wow Wow, and the now strangely ubiquitious Richard Harris.

Fluxblog

The original...

...Said The Gramophone

The other Wolf Parade obsessive 'round these parts, currently edited by Jordan Himmelfard. Out of Montreal.

Soul Sides

The more hip-hop and soul oriented on the list. The paragraphs read like the transcribed dialogue of a cartoon pimp cat sometimes, but it's tolerable.

Cocaine Blunts

Hands-down the best mp3blog out there with a focus on hip-hop, CB is the place to find hissy mp3s from old West Coast tapes you only wish your older siblings were cool enough to have had.


Mandatory Moustache All-Locals Series TONIGHT...

Former Blue Skies Turn Black house band Kiss Me Deadly perform along with Mia Verko, who unfortunately channel the more unexciting moments of Winnipeg bop-pop bands of years past (such as Painted Thin and the Bonaduces), and Crime Moth, whom I've never heard. The all-locals series has thrilled many a CEGEP student on Tuesdays past, and I assume tonight will be no exception. It's happening at Le Divan Orange (4234 St. Laurent), with a sliding scale door-price, and it's actually quite nicely set up in there, so show up around 8:30pm with your keenest attitude and cheapest cigarettes.

Shocktroops of Gentrification, Mythologization!

The usual cacophony of internet voices (this author included) have swelled up in disaffected resentment with the publication of the heavily-anticipated (you're lying if you say you weren't looking for it) NY Times article, which appeared in syndicated papers a couple of days prior, and follows Spin magazine's guide to Montreal. The prime complaint, as it always is and always will be, was that the article was unrepresentative of the actual music community and distorts what people are involved in. I'm of the opinion that most of music is a not entirely unappetizing mixture of sounds, artifice and posturing, and that these complaints are predicated on the existence of the authenticity of one particular's scenes creative endeavours, or at the least the striving for that authenticity, which is (once again) false, and a rather boring little way to box one's self and others in.

Then again, I'm a late-comer to the city, am still enchanted by it, even the quaint aspects that I should be shunning, and have none of the foresight of the more established veterans, who toil away on post-rock operettas and self-published chapbooks and home-brewed beer, and regard this as a, uhh, tsunami of hype that will wash over and in its wake, drag away those unable to clutch onto the palm trees of authentic creative experience. (To top that bit of tastelessness, I will later on be defending gentrification as the last hope for the crumbling inner cities with a variety of Sudden Infant-Death Syndrome metaphors...)

At the least, I would hope that many can use this article as an excuse to justify to Ontarian parents the lazy, shiftless, slumming bohemian lifestyle.

Besnard Lakes & Bionic

Sprawling psych-prog fetishists The Besnard Lakes and veterans of the Old Timers Hockey League Bionic square off tonight at Sala Rosa. Trivia bits: Jeremiah from Daddy's Hands now plays in The Besnard Lakes. Bionic's Jonathan Cummins has written a piece that, despite his many, many reservations printed in his latest Mirror column, will appear in this weekend's New York Times. Doors @ 9pm, $8.

CHROME

I'm sure a lot of you might be familiar with the name Helios Creed or Chrome's subsequent albums, but probably not the two tracks below (Jack Duckworth being an exception, of course). Chrome were founded by Damon Edge and Gary Spain in 1976, went out to release a ton of albums and only played two shows in their earlier days - the first in Italy at the request of eager and enthusiastic fans and the second in San Francisco, their hometown, both in August of 1981, after which Damon split the group and moved to Berlin to reform Chrome, while Helios formed his own group, releasing a string of albums, the later ones more dismal than the earlier. Damon died in 1995, his body remaining in his apartment for a month before being discovered... In 1996 Helios reformed Chrome, and toured in 1998 and briefly in 2000.

The first track is remarkably straight-ahead for Chrome, and one can imagine that The Calculators must have been taking notes before recording Circuit Breaking Silence. It's from the Moebius Tapes release.

Chrome - Something Rhythmic.mp3

This track is from their first album, The Visitaton which was recorded prior to Helios Creed joining the band. There are very heavy Television-like moments in this (unlike a band like the Strokes, who at one point were erroneously marked as sounding like Television by a lazy critic), not only in the vocals but the guitar theatrics as well. John Lambdin was in a Japanese psych band earlier in the 70s called The Flower Travellin' Band which could possibly account for some of the group's ability to transcend the caustic proto-punk and float about in the clouds. The very Eno-esque vocal-fadeout is nice, too.

Chrome - How Many Years Too Soon?.mp3

CBC Radio 3, Arcade Fire, AIDSWolf

CBC Radio 3's latest issue (#101) is a dense 101 in-concert sessions... Highlights are... #5 - Baron Samedi, Esq. with "Pride of Malabar", #8 - Blonde Redhead, #11 - British Sea Power, #26 - Destroyer, #54 - Manitoba, #64 - The Organ, #68 - The Pink Mountaintops, #84 - Spiritualized, #94 - Trans Am, #97 - The Unicorns.

There was a surprising turn-out for Dan Seligman's impromptu Sports Bar take-over. About 20-30 people showed up at Champ's last night to watch The Arcade Fire on Conan O'Brien. You can download a video of it below....

Arcade Fire on Conan O'Brien
AIDSWolf have an mp3 from their recording session with Arlen Thompson on Myspace. Geeks.

BLOW YR MIND!!!!!!!!!!

Two highly anticipated shows have been announced for April, both with features that may taint the overwhelmingly joyous psychedelic experiences. But you need that, it grounds you, ya know, stops you from dropping acid every week.

DOSE WITH: Amanita Muscaria.

On April 3rd, premiere group in bearded, dishevelled, forest-frolicking left-coast psychedelic mind-fucking Black Mountain Army will be at Sala Rosa, hopefully in ponchos. The first dark cloud on the golden horizon is the appearance of monotonous post-rockers The Album Leaf on the bill, and the second is the presence of the fourth-rate neutered indie wet noodles Crystal Skulls, who have certainly not earned the right to that moniker.
Black Mountain profile at Pitchfork

DOSE WITH: 2ci. Available by import from most Asian research chemical firms.

On April 29th, Caribou, who will have finished practicing in Toronto for a month or so prior, will be performing at El Salon. Let us all pray that the good vibes flowing from the astral plane and into our third eyes somehow manages to fix the sound-system and purge the room of its "suburban all-ages" atmosphere. The Junior Boys and The Russian Futurists provide pleasant diversions from the main event.

The AutoVauds head off for San Francisco tomorrow for the Film Festival there, and thus celebrate tonight at Korova (3908 St. Laurent) for Totally Tuesday, Slutsky and Tom Mix spin the records while others discuss the minute details of mid-90s GSL releases. Riveting stuff...