New SPOON Single - Written In Reverse

Spoon's latest LP Transference doesn't come out until January 19th, 2010, but you can hear the first single now. "Written in Reverse" is streaming at NPR Music. The single hits digital shops around midnight tonight.

New LYMBYC SYSTYM - Bedroom Anthem

Lymbyc Systym just released the new LP Shutter Release.

"With their new full-length, Shutter Release, Lymbyc Systym's Jared and Michael Bell are redefining what it means to be an instrumental band. The brothers make music that sings through you, and their impossibly personal vividly intimate melodies are the product of a lifetime of making music together. Seamlessly blending precision precise pop hooks, grandiose orchestration and experimental structures, their anthemic songs get straight to the point and leave the listener breathless. Their music resonates with our most personal experiences, and inevitably, our stories become the lyrics."

Check out the new track "Bedroom Anthem"...

Lymbyc Systym - Bedroom Anthem [mp3]

THE STROKES to Return in 2010!

After weeks of rumors that The Strokes will release a 4th LP in the new year, it has been confirmed that the NYC band will co-headline the 2010 Isle of Wight Festival with Jay-Z, Blondie, Orbital and Pink. What a crazy fun lineup! The festival goes down June 11-13 in the UK.

Hard To Explain

The Strokes | MySpace Music Videos

NEON INDIAN Remixes GRIZZLY BEAR

Grizzly Bear - Cheerleader (Neon Indian 'Sega Genesis P-Orridge' Remix) [mp3]
Grizzly Bear - Cheerleader (Neon Indian 'Studio 6669' Remix) [mp3]

SIMIAN MOBILE DISCO FT. BETH DITTO - Cruel Intentions

A positively bizarre video for Simian Mobile Disco's new single "Cruel Intentions", featuring Beth Ditto (Gossip) on vocals.

New YEASAYER Video - Ambling Alp (NSFW)

"Ambling Alp" is taken from Yeasayer's forthcoming sophomore LP Odd Blood, due February 9, 2010 on Secretly Canadian. "Ambling Alp" digital single, featuring remixes by Memory Tapes and DJ Rupture, available now here.

Yeasayer - Ambling Alp [mp3]

EDWARD SHARPE AND THE MAGNETIC ZEROS - SALVO!

The awesome Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros have ambitiously completed a 12-part feature-length music video. The first two segments have surfaced - "Desert Song" and "Kisses Over Babylon". Pull up a chair and get acquainted with the 10-piece psych-folk band who are responsible for one of the year's greatest singles, "Home".

The debut album Up From Below is available now.





Plus, the video for "Home"...

Happy Thanksgiving from The Sky Report!

Hope everyone has an awesome holiday. Best of 2009 lists should start popping up next week, with picks from some of our favorite artists.



Also, it's blog award season again and we are in the pool for Best Music Blog at the Weblog Awards. You can vote for The Sky Report here. Just scroll down to almost the end of the comments list, find The Sky Report, and click on the green "+" icon. We would really, really appreciate your vote! Much thanks!

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.

WOODS Live at The Whitney

Shot by Ray Concepcion for pitchfork tv.

New FEVER RAY Video - Keep the Streets Empty

BEACH HOUSE - Norway

"Norway", the gorgeous new track from Baltimore duo Beach House, gives fans a taste of their third LP Teen Dream, due January 26th via Sub Pop. The dreamy track, which showcases Victoria Legrand's bittersweet vocals alongside the band's ever-evolving reverb laden sound, is available for free via rcrdlbl.com.

Coachella Rumors 2010

As 2009 nears its end, rumors are starting to swirl as to who might grace the Coachella stages in 2010. Today Consequence of Sound has divulged that Muse are more than likely slated to be one of the headliners of the yearly festival when it goes down April 16-18 in Indio, California. Muse join the shortlist of (confirmed?) acts, which includes Devo, Hot Chip, The XX, Miike Snow, and Aeroplane. Other heavily rumored acts include Phoenix, Vampire Weekend, The Raveonettes, Echo & the Bunnymen, The Dead Weather, Pavement, Spacemen 3, and The Stooges. The official lineup announcement is expected sometime in January.

THE GOLDEN FILTER - Thunderbird

The Golden Filter - "Thunderbird" from The Golden Filter on Vimeo.

Get the free mp3 at thegoldenfilter.com.

RED WIRE BLACK WIRE Play Bushwick On Saturday

By David Teller, contributor

The opening track on Red Wire Black Wire's debut LP, Robots and Roses, roars with driving, definitive synth lines and pulsating guitar riffs that immediately put this band on the strong list of Brooklyn electro-pop indie bands. What makes RWBW stand out? Front-man Doug Walter puts his own spin on this genre by adding a tone of bodymovin melancholy with his crooning, often ironic vocals. Doug does a damn good job of reminding us that while at times we all may be pretty miserable in New York, we might as well dance it off. On track after track of danceable electronics and back-up vocals about broken relationships and alcohol, Doug shows his excitable fustration with lyrics like, "I'm breathing fire and you're cold." While successfully keeping up the tempo, your feet wont stop moving. On standout track "Tentacles", RWBW show a deeper human composition, proving that even dance machines (and apparently octopuses) wake up, hung over in graveyards while howling over orchestral accompaniment. There are some serious crowd pleasers on this record. Fans of The Killers' 80's synth-pop, razorblades and dance floors should keep an ear open for this Brooklyn baby-boomer. This is seriously good pop music. I wouldn't be surprised if I woke up to obvious singles "Reverse Tinman" and "Compass" on media outlets such as KEXP and XMU in the next couple of months.

Red Wire Black Wire will be playing Starr Space in Bushwick tomorrow, November 21st with The Binary Marketing Show, Indoors/Outdoors and DJ Matthew Radune. $6/9pm

Check out this Red Wire Black Wire performance and interview, shot at Death By Audio in Williamsburg...


Red Wire Black Wire from Ray Concepcioñ on Vimeo.

CFCF Offers Free Fleetwood Mac Cover

CFCF's new album Continent hits stores yesterday and we here at The Sky Report are loving it. A highlight from the album is the wonderful cover of Fleetwood Mac's "Big Love" and now the Montreal based artist is offering the track for free. Enjoy!

CFCF - Big Love (Fleetwood Mac cover) [mp3]

NO AGE - Losing Feeling

"Losing Feeling" is the title track from the new No Age ep, written and recorded in Los Angeles. The new video is a mesmerizing clip wherein the duo evolve from mice. Not sure what that's supposed to mean, but it sure looks awesome.

Losing Feeling is available now through SubPop.

CHARLOTTE GAINSBOURG (ft. BECK) - Heaven Can Wait

French actress/singer Charlotte Gainsbourg, daughter of Serge, has essentially written an entire album inspired by the frequent MRI's she had following a water skiing accident in 2007. The album, titled IRM (French for MRI), was produced and co-written by Beck, who also makes an appearance in the very impressive new video for the first single "Heaven Can Wait".

IRM is due January 26th via Because/Elektra.

WHITE DENIM - Fits

If you're looking for one of the best rock records of the year, look no further. White Denim's latest LP Fits is a true test in quick change ups, brooding funkadelic bass lines, and spastic 'fits' of adrenaline. The first single "I Start To Run" is a ferocious example of the band's ability to cause a sonic ruckus.

Fits is available now on Downtown Records.

HOT CHIP Announce New Album

British electronic band Hot Chip have announced the February 9th, 2010 release of their fourth LP, brilliantly titled One Life Stand. The new effort will feature guest spots from drummer Charles Hayward of This Heat and Leo Taylor of indie band The Invisible. The first track to emerge from the new album is "Take It In" and you can listen to it now below.

New ATLAS SOUND Virtual 7"

Bradford Cox continues his prolific output by posting this new free virtual 7" on his Deerhunter blog. "Doctor" is an awesome cover of The Five Discs. It also comes backed with the new track "Screens". Mediafire link below.

Download Virtual 7"

BEST COAST - When I'm With You

Yet another fan video made for a Best Coast track. These are so fun! This time we get the new song "When I'm With You", scoring some happy-dappy dance scene from "Les Demoiselles de Rochefort", an old Jacques Demy musical.

New MEMORY TAPES - Graphics (Edit)

Memory Tapes - Graphics (edit) [link]

Guilty Pleasure - LADY GAGA - Bad Romance

I can't help it. The best thing happening in pop music today.

ÓLAFUR ARNALDS - Found Songs

Icelandic neo-classical composer Ólafur Arnalds follows up his critically acclaimed debut with a stunning collection of new tracks, aptly titled Found Songs. Let yourself fall into this gorgeous masterpiece of a video for "Ljósið". The new album is available now on Erased Tapes.

Ólafur Arnalds - Ljósið (Official Music Video) from Erased Tapes on Vimeo.

3 Years of The Sky Report

The Sky Report officially turned three years old over the weekend! Thanks to everyone who reads this blog and has supported us in our infancy. We're looking forward to another year of music!

STRANGE BREAKS & MR. THING II

Back in early 2008 we went gaga for the amazing Strange Breaks & Mr. Thing compilation. Now there is a volume 2 and like it's predecessor, it is chalk full of rare and sought after breaks. You can stream tracks or download your own digital copy at BBE Music.

New GRIZZLY BEAR Video - Ready, Able

Directed by Allison Schulnik, the latest Grizzly Bear video is as haunting and beautiful as any of the band's previous videos. "Ready, Able" is taken from Veckatimest, available now on Warp.

M.I.A. Working On New Album

According to Pedestrian, M.I.A. is busy at work on her follow-up to Kala, the album that won her worldwide critical accolades and shot her to stardom. Word has it, Diplo and Switch return to the helm, along with additional undisclosed producers. Diplo recently spoke out about the new effort. "Been in the studio with M.I.A. working on her new record. It's like Gucci Mane meets Animal Collective. I think there are a couple of people [producing] but we're going to finish it off, me and Switch. We've done like four tracks already."

I'm in.

Previously:

M.I.A. Galang - Music video from marco ammannati on Vimeo.

CFCF - Continent

CFCF has made waves here before. Now he's back, and this time with a full-length album.

"Continent, the long awaited debut full length from Montreal's CFCF (aka Mike Silver), takes Silver's musical and visual influences and turns them to song, leading one through varying landscapes and moods. The album comes to us after a long string of remixes for HEALTH, The Presets, The Teenagers, and Hearts Revolution. In the time leading up to Continent, he released the Panesian Nights EP and The Explorers single, which featured label-mate and frequent collaborator Sally Shapiro."

You can purchase the album digitally at Paperbag Records.

CFCF - Monolith [mp3]

Previously:

SHARON VAN ETTEN, NATUREBOY, REY VILLALOBOS This Saturday in Brooklyn

Kevchino.com Presents . . . .
Sharon Van Etten, Natureboy, Rey Villalobos
Saturday, November 7th Union Pool
DJ Scot Bowman of The Sky Report will be spinning between sets
Reindeer Art show by Brad Nack in the lobby
$10 Advance online and $12 at the door. 21+
TICKETS

A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS - Exploding Head

Always a sucker for new music that sounds like Jesus and Mary Chain, Pornography-era Cure, or My Bloody Valentine, I am naturally smitten with the new A Place To Bury Strangers album Exploding Head. The Brooklyn band just wrapped a US tour and recently released a video for the first single, "In Your Heart".



Previously:



Exploding Head is available now on Mute.

Review:FLAMING LIPS - Embryonic93%

Flaming Lips: Embryonic (Warner bros.)
review by Matthew Lindsay

Call it willfully perverse career suicide or seeking out new musical frontiers but one thing is undeniable; the Flaming Lips' sprawling new 18-track disc Embryonic is a bold volte face away from the Hanna Barbera, orch-pop they have been mining since 1999's Soft Bulletin. If the day-glo quirkiness was becoming a bit too cloying by 2006's At War With The Mystics, Embryonic is a paradigm-shifting stroke of audacity that will alienate some, but entice others. Critical opinion is already polarized, making it 'vital, complex and new', at least according to Oscar Wilde.

Opening salvo "Convinced Of The Hex" crash lands the listener into the Lips' reconfigured aesthetic. A dense, swirling slice of dystopic psychedelia (imagine Can's "Mushroom" sound-tracking the 'happening' in Midnight Cowboy). This is where krautrock meets the Beatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows" in a foreboding slice of nihilism, apparently inspired by repeated viewings of The Night Porter.

The track's ricochet rhythms, sparkling fender rhodes and abrasive guitars are all over the rest of Embryonic. Indeed, "Aquarius Sabotage" could be "Bitches Brew"-era Miles Davis, retooled to the specifications of a garage band. When Alice Coltrane-like harp trills and other sumptuous flourishes seem to tantalizingly hark back to their former technicolour incarnation, they are quickly sucked back into the vortex of the mix. However, it's when they slow things down that the contrast with their former selves becomes most stark. "Evil" is a funereal dirge replete with theremin-on-downers synths and disarming jolts of distortion. This bleak terrain is topped off with a lyric of disenchantment ('people are evil...and they'll hurt you if they can') and a Wayne Coyne vocal of world-weary fragility. There's no reassuring sugarcoating on Coyne's existential musings anymore and The Flaming Lips soundlab here resembles some desolate, teutonic warehouse as opposed to the aural equivalent of Willy Wonka's factory.

Portishead's Third springs to mind as a kindred spirit not just in its palpable sense of unease, its destablizing bursts of noise or in its modus operandi being tearing up one's own rule-book. Both seem to update the ominous, apocalyptic strand of post-summer of love 60's rock. Of course, Embryonic's very structure recalls the profuse miscellany and indulgent creativity that characterized the doubles of that era (the aforementioned "Bitches Brew", "Electric Ladyland"). If The Beatles' White Album is a reference point at all, it's in the radiophonic voices (the lips enlist the services of mathematician Thorsten Wormann for announcements) and the tangential 'turning the dial' collage of Revolution 9 But the Flaming Lips are too liberating a proposition to succumb to slavish homage. Indeed, at one point "Powerless" breaks out into a frazzled guitar solo that recalls Roger McGuinn's channeling of Coltrane on The Byrds' "Eight Miles High". This is no xerox: it mutates into something entirely of its own distorted design.

Nowhere is the comparison with recent Portishead more apparent than in the marauding "See The Leaves" which comes off like camouflaged trip -hop with its furtive groove and rapid-fire drum fills. When it disperses in to a spooky spectral coda, occupying some bizarre midpoint between ELO and Tangerine Dream, the scope of the music on offer here seems breathtaking.

It's not always easy listening and as is entirely befitting of a disc called Embryonic, some tracks seem inchoate, as if they were conceived as they were recorded (it was sculpted largely from jams). But even when the hooks are obfuscated by turgid noise as on "Worm Mountain" (featuring a barely audible MGMT) , an unrelenting love of sonic tricks keeps things propulsive. Similarly, "I Can Be a Frog" veils its John Barry-worthy luxuriant opulence with the muffled animal impressions of Karen O. Embryonic often sounds like the work of several different bands sometimes playing simultaneously (remember the 4-cd Zareika was actually just that). This wall of sound never lapses into sludge simply because their protean grasp of music (what Coyne refers to as the 'psychedelic sword mentality') has a rarefied air about it, flying its freak flag in the face of prosaic ipod conformity.

So much so that two moments of relatively straightforward loveliness are buried amid the mire at the end of the disc. "Silver Trembling Hands" is a delirious ghost ride of a song, its juggernaut beat and b-movie, sci-fi effects sounding like nothing less than some obscure 60's garage band nugget shot through the lens of Luis Bunuel. It then shifts gears to break out into a haze of sun-drenched lysergic pop that is the closest they get here to the Lips of yore. "Watching the Planets" is a vast, strident finale where the otherworldly fantasia of vari-speed vocals is bed-rocked by a drum sound as colossal as Led Zeppelin. Such air-punching swagger suggests a band creatively rejuvenated by their 18-track odyssey.

Embryonic is an old-fashioned beast, a work to be enjoyed in its' entirety, preferably bursting forth from speakers rather than headphones (it can sound cluttered and diminished on an ipod). Its' too easy to suggest that the Lips could have excised some of these excesses and made a more economic record, if they had then it wouldn't be the warped, idiosyncratic thing of beauty that it is. And this is shape-shifting, questing music of the highest calibre.

-Matthew Lindsay, contributer

New RAVEONETTES - The Chosen One

Vice Records and The Raveonettes are offering up the new, previously unreleased track "The Chosen One" for free. "The jittery soda-shop stomp" is not a bad outtake from the new album In and Out of Control.

The Raveonettes - The Chosen One [mp3]