PANTHA DU PRINCE to Release Black Noise

Pantha du Prince - The Splendour [mp3]

Pantha du Prince first grabbed my attention with his previous release This Bliss. His new album Black Noise is due February 9th via Rough Trade and features guest contributions from Noah Lennox of Animal Collective and Tyler Pope of !!! and LCD Soundsystem. Stream more Pantha du Prince here.

PANDA BEAR Talks About New Record

In an interview with Pedestrian, Noah Lennox aka Panda Bear aka one of the Animal Collective dudes talks about the recording process of his new solo/Panda Bear album. His last one, Person Pitch is one of the best albums of the decade, so this is exciting news!

"It’s been a long process. I’ve thought about it for a long time while we were doing the Merriweather stuff, so I had a long gestation process in my mind but only really started cracking on it in September. It’s kind of scary doing something totally different, like I've been working in a sampler zone for five or six years now. It definitely feels like a new zone, its scary but also exciting as well... The rhythms are really basic and kind of raw and simple and are electronic. It's not live instrumentation, I’ve been playing guitar but I feed it through the same thing that the sequences are on. It’s a very electronic sound and very voice heavy. A simple arrangement of drums, the guitar and singing. Really there are only two or three elements to every song. It’s pretty raw sounding for better for worse."

Read the full interview at Pedestrian.

Panda Bear "Comfy in Nautica" from Patrick O'Dell on Vimeo.

BABE, TERROR - Weekend

Babe, Terror is a one man band from Sao Paulo, Brazil who comes across like the neo-tropicalia offspring of Panda Bear and El Guincho. Claudio Szynkier sings in Portuguese and hums in hallucinatory snippets, creating a post Brian Wilson kaleidoscope of sound and beauty - music for dreaming. The perfectly titled new LP Weekend will be released physically in May, but is available digitally now.

You can download the entire album or start with these key tracks...

Babe, Terror - Havai (link)
Babe, Terror - Epicentro (link)

Review EL GUINCHO - Alegranza! 91%

El Guincho is the one-man project of Spanish musician Pablo Díaz-Reixa, a man deeply ensconced in a variety of influences ranging from sun-splashed 60’s harmonies and Afrobeat to Tropicália, dub, exotica and Bhangra, just to name a few. What’s fascinating about Alegranza! though, is how these varying influences are shaken and stirred into a drink of its own unique flavor.

The album kicks off perfectly with the celebratory island anthem “Palmitos Park”. A refreshing burst of tropical delight, the track utilizes a very Martin Denny-esque sample of “oohs” to great effect, creating the most inviting prelude in recent memory. The jubilant “Antillas” quickly follows, keeping the tempo up high in order to reel you in for the far more interesting core of the album; one that many critics have compared to last year’s brilliant Person Pitch LP by Panda Bear. And the similarities indeed exist, particularly the dramatic use of repetition throughout.

Alegranza! is a wildly colorful collage of sample loops, tribal chants, and tropical percussion that plays out like a mind-jangling dream that, at times, numbs the brain into a whimsical trance, but in fleeting moments successfully harnesses a sense of profoundness. The nine-track, 40-minute album is hugely infectious, which is impressive considering how truly bizarre it is. The disc slips further and further into a carnival of sounds and sonic chaos, but somehow remains utterly rhythmic and gorgeous.

On “Kalise”, a steel drum loop queues off a deep tribal beat and an array of repetitious Spanish chants, which ultimately builds up into a constellation of infectious grooves. “Buenos Matrimonios Ahi Fuera” begins with children chanting an innocent lament before sidling up to a jangly mix of percussion. A couple minutes in, the track seamlessly diverts into a strange, but hypnotizing sort of downtempo dub jam. And on tracks like “Costa Paraiso” and “Prez Legarto” the heart of this circus comes a little closer, as Díaz-Reixa reveals a voice that excels in live-looping, a contribution that could easily be overlooked in the barrage of sounds that are at work here.

In all its colorful beauty, Alegranza! is El Guincho’s unmistakable love letter to his birth-land of the Canary Islands. In fact, the title literally refers to a location in the Spanish territory. Though now based in Barcelona, Díaz-Reixa is clearly a romantic for the beautiful locale of his youth, as this is the explosive expression of one man’s unique upbringing in “paradise”.
-Scot Bowman

Originally published at kevchino.com.

THE PRESENT - World I See

"The Present is the new music project of legendary New York musician and producer Rusty Santos (Panda Bear ‘Person Pitch’, Born Ruffians ‘Red Yellow & Blue’, Animal Collective ‘Sung Tongs’). Described by one band who worked with him as a hyper boy genius, Rusty has always fixed his attention on producing music that is experimentally rich while remaining accessible. By attempting to create music that arises unconsciously through improvisation, The Present’s debut album ‘World I See’ hauls this ethos over its shoulders as it tramples on musical boundaries and preconceptions, whilst leaving an album that is still capable of relating musically and emotionally to a wide audience."

Some really awesome, experiment tracks are streaming now at myspace. World I See will be released October 7th via LOAF.

The Present - World I See (link removed)

World I See tracklist:

1. Heavens On Ice
2. World I See
3. Love Melody
4. Symbols On High
5. Africanized Beatniks
6. The Hunt

Reader's Choice - Breakthrough Artist of 2007 - GRIZZLY BEAR / THE TEENAGERS

It's a tie!

A few of you spoke, and the consensus is that Brooklyn-based Grizzly Bear tied with the Parisian hipster band The Teenagers for The Sky Report's Reader's Choice poll for Breakthrough Artist of the Year.

Other artists ranking high in the poll were Panda Bear, Deerhunter, Glass Candy, and Battles.

NEW VIDEO FRIDAY

Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings - 100 Days, 100 Nights


Panda Bear - Comfy in Nautica


Liars - Houseclouds


Holy Hail - Cool Town Rock


The Softlightes - The Microwave Song


Black Dice - Kokomo