Brooklyn based quartet Conveyor unveiled a video to accompany ‘Woolgatherer’, the single lifted previously from their eponymous debut album, out last summer via Paper Garden Records.
Matthew Thompson directs and you can watch it below.
Bibio offers first taste from upcoming album Silver Wilkinson
British producer and musician Stephen Wilkinson aka Bibio has announced the release of his seventh album fittingly titled Silver Wilkinson. The effort draws inspiration from organic environments, particularly his own garden.
“If there was a preconceived idea before this album started coming together, it was a fairly vague one: to focus more on an organic and live sound and to record more guitar and other live instrumentation”, said Bibio in a handwritten statement about his forthcoming album. “I like the idea of comparing albums to seasons – they stand alone yet are part of a bigger story. They complement each other. So this album, to an extent, started out with the desire for a new ‘season’, contrasting somewhat with the previous.”
Silver Wilkinson will hit stores on May 13th in Europe and a day later in North America via Warp. Ahead of it, Bibio dropped the first bright and gorgeous single, ‘À tout à l’heure’. Bibio explains how the song came about:
“The recording of ‘À tout à l’heure’ started out in my garden on a gorgeous sunny day when it felt morally wrong to be hidden away indoors. I still had the urge to make music so I limited myself to a few bits of gear and set up in my garden: a 12 string guitar, an MPC sampler, a microphone and a cassette recorder. I drummed on objects in the garden, like a plastic watering can and ‘snipped’ garden shears for percussion parts. The guitar part was something I had been developing over some time in my head but it was this change of environment that led to recording the backbone of this song, which I then continued to build upon in my studio later. When I listen to the intro of that track now, I still hear the sunshine and the garden in it because for me it’s like a photograph of that moment. No doubt the sunny outdoors inspired the lyrics too.”
Listen to ‘À tout à l’heure’ beneath and grab it free here, in exchange for an email.
Superhuman Happiness release fun-filled debut album
You probably know by now we have been highly anticipating the release of Hands, the debut album from New York based collective Superhuman Happiness. The wait is finally over and the septet’s album came out yesterday via The Royal Potato Family.
Hands, which takes its name from a series of hand-clapping games the band would play at the beginning of each rehearsal, is a joyful, vibrant, infectious and sexy album. A kaleidoscopic party is to be had listening to it.
We might soon be hearing more from Superhuman Happiness here on Cast the Dice. Before that, make sure you head over to Spinner where the full album is streaming, or buy it here. You’ll be listening to it again and again.
That Iron Taste by Marika Hackman
Very rarely there is a new artist with an ineffable quality that instantly registers strongly enough to make it seem obvious that they are on an unavoidable course towards doing some fantastic things. More scarce still is the artist that lives up to that initial impression.
With only one single and an ep of cover songs, strong as they may be, the jury was still out on Marika Hackman until the recent release of her first true album, That Iron Taste, and I’m more than pleased at the result, I feel like my hunch was steadfastly affirmed.
Opening at a jaunty pace that may cloak the darkness of the lyrics, though ultimately optimistic, “Bath Is Black” is fitting introduction to the Marika Hackman’s song-writting style. It’s this quality I value most in her songs: There is a constant self-assurance amongst much darkness.
Along with this release comes a video for “Cannibal”. On more than one occasion has someone mentioned “The Shining” while watching this video (and without fail how disgusting is it), but it is done in quite a beautiful way. Of the 7,000 views on YouTube, I can only guess at how many of them I am responsible for.
Closing out the album is the song that first caught my attention last summer, “You Come Down”. Seems she may appreciate cyclical themes as much as I do. I’ve been less than reserved about my appreciation and I feel it is a bit superfluous to suggest you give it a listen yourself but – you really should.
Honeybear (Aaron Meyer) is the founder of the blog Mouser at heymouser.com, updated every weekday with new music from great experimental-pop, dream-pop, folk, and electronic artists as well as alt-comedy.
Parenthetical Girls unveil video for ‘A Note To Self’
Privilege (Abridged) is the latest LP from Portland’s Parenthetical Girls, out now in the US via Marriage Records and released today in the UK and Europe via Splendour Records. Originally released as a five-part EP series between 2010-12, the extravagant outfit led by Zac Pennington condensed the original 21 songs from the five EP’s to a remastered and remixed 12-track album.
“Privilege retains the group’s signature ambitions-visceral intimacy, camp austerity, lurid eloquence-while confidently embracing the perfect pop pastiche their previous records only alluded to”, as the album’s blurb says. “Privilege is a cascade of grim particulars and gallows humour-an unflinching treatise on privilege, indiscretion, betrayal, sex and class politics, failure, and resignation.”
Last week Parenthetical Girls unveiled a video to accompany ‘A Note To Self’. Here’s what Zac Pennington said about the video:
“A winking homage to the works of performance artists like Vito Acconci, Marina Abramovic, Chris Burden, and Bas Jan Ader, “A Note To Self” uses obsolete, era-appropriate video technology to painstakingly recreate the awkward, incidental, and ridiculously fetishized aesthetics of late 60s, early 70s performance art documentation. It’s supposed to make you feel that way.”
Check it out below.
Little Tybee set to release third full-length album in April
Atlanta based five-piece Little Tybee will drop their third full-length album, For Distant Viewing, on April 9th via Paper Garden Records.
Taking their name from an island off the coast of Savannah, Georgia, Little Tybee’s make music “that amalgamates jazz-like virtuosity, symphonic scope, and hook-laden folk into something focussed and distinctly original”, as the press release explains.
Little Tybee have already teased the album with its glorious title track, for which the quintet’s own mastermind Brock Scott filmed and edited a stunning video, featuring breathtaking footage shot all over the US whilst on tour.
To entice you even further, the band are releasing a one-shot visual accompaniment for every song on For Distant Viewing. All of the videos feature a television showing a live waveform of the song. Keep an eye on these here, where you can already check the visualizer for a couple of tracks from the upcoming album.
Now let yourself go and contemplate the magical world of ‘For Distant Viewing’.
