J'aime mon bicyclette...

Well a thousand apologies for the delay. I was working on this one shortly before the arrival of Mr. Archer Klimczak-Elves - aka my son - and it got lost in the shuffle of diapering and feeding, but I'm hoping to get back behind the wheel and begin regular updates again...




This one's been on the back-burner for a bit, and it's really difficult to discuss ANYTHING bicycle related when there's another dump of snow on the ground here in Winterpeg, but what can you do? Mother Nature made April Fools of us and we'll just have to grin and bear it.

Perhaps as you dream about pedaling on pavement and not ice, you can listen to one or more of a clutch of great little records that came out earlier this year on Olympia, WA label Bicycle Records. Mid-February we received five very interesting records that went for radio adds throughout the month of March.

The first of these, and my personal favourite is For Now, For Then, For Them from Lily Maring who records under the moniker Yes Please. Maring moved from Olympia to Oakland, but continues her association with the label on this, her first full-length. There's a swirling mixture of lo-fi, pop and tiny orchestrated pieces layered bit-by-bit on this album. Take a listen to the lead-off track, "Love Probe," a sweetly winning number.



Next up is the Nextdoor Neighbors - who, it turns out, are actually neighbors. Their album Magic vs. the Machine is described as "folktronic or electro-folk-hop," the former descriptor bringing to mind Beth Orton and the latter some of Beck's earliest work but for my money, the band that comes to mind when listening to Jessie Hill and Kathy Cote is Depeche Mode. Listen to the title track and you'll hear the sinister edge to the keyboards and the breathy vocals...

Oventoucher is a pretty affecting (and hilarious) album from Jenny Jenkins. There are some great acerbic lyrics and some very coarse ones as well. Jenkins doesn't pull any punches, particularly on songs like "Bus Angel" and "Chance" where her lovelorn heart is on full display. She's a romantic who has taken off her rose-coloured glasses but who hopes in her heart of hearts to one day don them again.

June Madrona would likely go over pretty well with fans of The Decemberists - and not just because Russ Cowman's voice is vaguely Meloy-esque, but also because the lyrics to their sprightly folk-pop tunes read like little novellas. "Contents Of A Bus" from their record Battlegrounds demonstrates this pretty well (on a related note, there's a curious fascination with public transit amongst the material from Bicycle Records artists - is there a clause in their contracts?)

Love Letter To New Zealand from Polka Dot Dot Dot is the quietest record of the bunch so it's the one that takes a more dedicated listen to reveal its charms. Consider "Gold Watch" which is propelled by finger-snaps and features breezy harmonies from band members Jordan'O Jordan, Onyx of Olympia and Twig Palace. The trio came together while touring New Zealand (thus the album title) and their material has the whimsical quality of three different but not disparate artists thrown together to create something new (which is sort of like Mike Petkau's Record Of The Week Club project which I'll likely write about in the next little while...)

So those are the Bicycle Records records I wanted to talk about back when the snow was still falling and my lady was still 'with child.' He's here and the snow is gone and baseball season (real and fantasy) is in full swing so I'm a happy guy.

Thanks for reading, now start listening...

How to lose listeners and alienate MD's...

This rant will be brief, but I'm warning you now, it's a rant.

Earlier today, I was going through the mail we receive twice daily here at UMFM. As a good-sized campus/community station we get a fair number of albums in the mail and sometimes to cut down on costs we'll get the liner and CD without a jewel case. This tends to piss me off a bit because it's not like we're flush with spare jewel cases around here. But I understand that it cuts down on weight for shipping, so I chalk it up as a peeve and get over it.

HOWEVER, today I received an album that just irritated the hell out of me. Ice Palace's Wonder Subtly Crushing Us wasn't sent without a jewel case - it was sent WITHOUT PACKAGING. Someone decided it would be a good idea to send us the album by simply sticking an address label on the front of the album and slapping down $1.42 for postage. Maybe there's an environmental impetus behind this decision as I noticed the "Offset with NativeEnergy.com" logo on the back, but if that's the case, why not go strictly digital? As you can see from the photo below, between the address label, the customs sticker and the postage 'stamp' it's virtually impossible to see the album underneath. And with the type of cardstock that was used for the album, it's virtually impossible to take these stickers off without tearing off the artwork.

So I'm not going to even attempt it.

This album is unusable in its present condition - none of our programmers are going to check it out on the New Release shelf when it looks like this, and if it's all torn up they're less likely to do so. I'm not sure how many industry types, promoters or label-reps read this here blog but if you do I'll say straight up this is not how you service a record.

Feel free to root through the U of M's recycling if you want to hear this record, 'cause that's where it's going after I post this.

I'm hot for Hot 'n' Cold...

Honestly, I should be working - or at least starting on an actual album-related post, but I just saw this video and had to share. Ukranian band Los Colorados' cover of Katy Perry's "Hot 'n' Cold" (on what appears to be the Ukranian equivalent of The Big Breakfast... Wake up Kiev, perhaps?). It is brilliant.
Enjoy.

Hot damn, it's Kutiman!

I try to abide by some rules for my posts, and one of those is to only discuss albums here on Ear To The Sound, but something came across my desk today that I am compelled to share. And thankfully I've already written about the artist in question when his full-length album came out.

Kutiman has REMIXED YOUTUBE, the results of which can be seen here and below. And when I say "remixed youtube" I mean he took a bunch of videos and spliced them together to create a project entitled Thru You from the assembled audio parts. IT IS FREAKIN' AMAZING.



That is all.

While I wait for the snow to melt, I listen to Bird By Snow

I know February is the shortest month of the year, but this one really got away on me. Between suffering from strep throat and readying the baby room for the impending addition to the family I just never had a moment to post here. Which is not to say I haven't heard any blog-worthy music over the past month. Far from it. While painting the baby room I listened to a whole host of new albums including Grizzly Bear's Veckatimest, the Great Lake Swimmer's Lost Channels and The Boy Least Likely To's The Law Of The Playground. That Grizzly Bear record has been blogged to bits and if you aren't up on the Great Lake Swimmers after Bodies and Minds and Ongiara, well I can't help you. But You Ain't No Picasso can.

I may yet write about The Boy Least Likely To, whose follow-up to the sweetly winning The Best Party Ever merits its own post but the album I want to feature today is one that I became aware of thanks to my pal J-Rod and the blog bolachas grátis who put me on to Bird By Snow. It's an album I've been returning to repeatedly these last few weeks.

By turns hushed and clamorous, Bird By Snow's material is lovingly hand-crafted from field recordings, tape-collage, voice, guitar, cello and more. Fletcher Tucker (the steady hand behind BBS) has entitled the album Songbread/Another Ocean as he views each side of the LP as its own entity, deserving of its own nomenclature and "more mind-space to flourish and expand," though I have trouble drawing a distinction between the two halves - it's a uniformly captivating record.

There are squalls of white noise that drift in and out of the mix, and Tucker's use of silence lends it an instrumental quality. And while the songs don't quite fall under the 'freak folk' umbrella, I can imagine there is some overlap between audiences for Devendra Banhart, MV & EE and Bird By Snow. But where Banhart populates his song with characters, playing up the quirk, and MV & EE suffuse their folk with drone, Bird By Snow is intensely personal and the melodies are never lost amidst the surrounding noise. It's beautiful music, but the beauty is a fragile and awkward one.

Before I go, here's a selection from the the Songbread half of the release entitled "If You Wait."

You can order the album from Gnome Life Records, and be sure to visit Bird By Snow's Myspace page (the band's personal website appears to be down).

Thanks for reading, now start listening...

Contest Time: Tom Fun Orchestra

So, as announced over the weekend, today marks the start of my Tom Fun Orchestra contest (courtesy of the fine folks at The Musebox).

I've spent quite a bit of time detailing my longlist and my Top 20 over the past month or so here on Ear To The Sound. With that in mind, to have a chance at winning a pair of tickets for their Saturday, February 21, 2009 show at the King's Head as well as a copy of their album all you have to do is send me YOUR 2008 Best Of List (and I'll accept Fives, Tens, Fifteens, Twenties or whatever). You can leave it as a comment or email me at the address at the bottom of the page. If you do send me an email, make your subject line "Tom Fun Orchestra Contest." I'll pick a random winner from the entries (NO, I won't judge you or your list - I'm trying to make it objective, not subjective) and announce it here on Friday, February 20. I'll also be running another contest on my radio show Thank God It's Free Range, live on-air between 6:30-8pm CST that same day, with yet another chance to win a pair of tickets and a copy of the album - so if your list isn't drawn tune in and call in!

Here's another selection from You Will Land With A Thud to get you ready for their show - check out "Watchmaker" and send in your entries!

You're all winners to me...

Big news. Thanks to the fine folks at The Musebox, Ear To The Sound will be running its first ever contest starting tomorrow. Halifax band (if you read the press, or Sydney band if you check out their Myspace) the Tom Fun Orchestra will be playing at the King's Head on Saturday February 21, 2009 and in conjunction with my radio show I'll be giving away two pairs of tickets and two copies of their album You Will Land With A Thud. One ticket pair/CD combo will go to a reader of Ear To The Sound and the other will go to a listener on Thank God It's Free Range.

Details of the contest will be announced tomorrow and the winners will be simultaneously annouced online and on air Friday, February 20, 2009.

Take a listen to the title-track from Tom Fun Orchestra's latest album and remember to check back tomorrow.