Author Archives: Pavla

It’s almost here! The night before Record Store Day is like Christmas Eve for music nerds worldwide. And hey, if you haven’t got the disposable income to load up on limited edition and exclusive vinyl tomorrow, don’t even worry about it. There is a ton of stuff going on around town for your audiophile ears to feast on that will keep your wallet happy. Here’s are some Record Store Day must-do’s for tomorrow:

Generation Records (1pm) – Obits, The Jay Vons, I Hate Our Freedom, Spa Castles, & DJ sets by Yo La Tengo, Tom Scharplin, Eric Davidson, Bill Dolan, and Mike Longo.

Kim’s – (5pm) Angel Olsen and (6pm) Bow Ribbons

Other Music – (2pm) Regina Spektor solo performance in-store

Vintage Vinyl – (1pm) In-store signing with John Leguizamo, (2pm) Bruce Tunkel in-store performance, (3pm) Ian Axel in-store performance.

If you haven’t had enough of Record Store Day by the time you’re done with all of that, don’t forget to head over the Beyond Beyond Is Beyond Record Club at the CSV Center to listen to some quality vinyl. Doors at 7:30pm and the first needle drops at 8pm!

I imagine most of us will be spending the day on Sunday locked in our apartments, recovering from Record Store Day and spending quality time listening to all of the vinyl goodies from the day before. But when the cabin fever sets in during the early evening hours, here’s the perfect solution: go check out Wylie Hunter & The Cazadores at Spike Hill in Williamsburg.

The Chapel Hill based band is fronted by 23-year old Wylie Hunter, who exudes a raw energy through earnestly penned lyrics that make the age of 23 seem wayward and weathered. Their debut self-titled 7 track EP is available for sale on the name-your-own-price model.

Spike Hill is located at 186 Bedford Ave at N 7th street and Wylie and Co. go on at 7pm.

Record Store Day 2011 is just about a week away! That’s pretty much all we’ve been talking about around here. But can you blame us? Just take a look at all the awesome, exclusive, limited edition vinyl that you can pick up at participating stores next Saturday.

Cults, Death Cab for Cutie, Deerhoof, The Dodos, Fleet Foxes, Matt & Kim, Midlake, Peter Bjorn & John, Regina Spektor, Will Self, and Xiu Xiu are some of the most exciting pieces. There’s also a really neat 7″ inch series called The Side By Side Series which features a track from an original band coupled with a cover. Green Day tipping their hat to Husker Du with I Don’t Want To Know If You Are Lonely is the one my eyeballs are turning into hearts for.

Cults – Abducted/Go Outside (remix)
Features two tracks, “Abducted” and “Go Outside (remix).” The “Go Outside” remix is exclusively available only on this Record Store Day 7″.

Death Cab For Cutie – Atlantic Records Presents: Death Cab For Cutie In Living Stereo!
This exclusive Record Store Day 7″ is the first place to hear new music from Death Cab. All songs will be on the new record in May. Pieces of new tracks featured are “Home is a Fire”, “You Are A Tourist” and “Some Boys.”

Deerhoof – Friend Opportunity
Deerhoof’s Friend Opportunity is being reissued on vinyl this Record Store Day as a limited edition run of 1000 copies on limited 180-gram translucent green vinyl with an MP3 download card.The album is the first to feature guitarist John Dietrich and features the same line-up as appears on their recently released brand new album Deerhoof vs. Evil.

Deerhoof/Xiu Xiu – Almost Xiu Xiu, Almost Deerhoof
Xiu Xiu and Deerhoof collaborate on Side A of this limited edition (2000 pieces) 7″, which is “Almost Xiu Xiu, Almost Deerhoof.” The B-side is a brand new Xiu Xiu song called “Gregory Saunier Retaliation.” MP3 download card included with every disc.

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Hailing from the Mediterranean coastal city of Valencia, Polock take their name from exactly where you’d think – named after one of their inspirations, the painter Jackson Pollock.

As one of Spain’s most important indie buzz acts, they have quickly become renowned for their contagious hooks and melodies. Their US debut album, Getting Down From The Trees pleasantly blends sounds that spell out influences of Phoenix meets fellow electro indie rock Spaniards, Delorean.

Getting Down From The Trees was recorded over two months in a Berlin studio after the group spent a year writing the album in Spain. It’s out now in the U.S. on Nacional Records. If their constant live presence at SXSW this year proved anything, it was that these guys are steadily climbing onto the radar and are not to be missed.

Polock play at Pianos (158 Ludlow St.) tonight at 10pm. Tickets are $8 at the door.

In celebration of our favorite holiday (Record Store Day!) our pals at Captured Tracks have just told us they’re releasing two classic, hard to find singles by highly influential Scottish post-punk band, The Wake.

These two releases book-end the 80’s for the band, as their privately released On Our Honeymoon 7″ on Scan in 1982 was their first (and only) pre-Factory record, while Crush the Flowers is their final release in the 80’s (1989) and their first post-Factory record for the illustrious Sarah label.

In conjunction with those two releases, Captured Tracks is also offering a tribute white vinyl 7″ featuring faithful and well-crafted Wake-approved covers of two classic songs by two C/T artists, Beach Fossils and Wild Nothing.Only 1,000 of each 7″ will be pressed. Of those 1,000, there will be an offering of 300 bundles which will have all three 7″s packaged together. The bundle of all three 7″ records will come with reproduced buttons of The Wake. Neat stuff, right?

France’s Tahiti 80 swept onto the musical radar in 1999 with their debut full length, Puzzle. Since then, they’ve consistently released unabashedly upbeat electro pop records (an impressive 10 EPs and 5 full lengths to be exact) that have positioned them on the front lines of the French pop invasion, in the company of fellow invaders like Phoenix and Air.

The latest and most recently released Tahiti 80 full-length is The Past The Present and The Possible, out now on Human Sounds. Check out what all of the “oh la la” is about tonight at Mercury Lounge. The show is at 9:30 and tickets are $15 at the door.

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Downtown Records are celebrating their 5th anniversary this weekend with two killer shows at Webster Hall (tonight) and Terminal 5 (tomorrow night). From the line-up below, it’s looking like this is the best 5 year old’s birthday we’ve ever been to (I wonder if it will be Scooby Doo themed?)

To get everyone in the spirit for these 2 nights of P-A-R-T-Y, RCRD LBL have curated the perfect mix featuring artists from both shows. So throw this on to get in the mood and while you’re at it, download every track for free.

Happy Birthday, Downtown Records!

One of the things the Internet is great at is preserving things that never should have ended in the first place. For every time the Internet aides in the discovery of a new fact, current event, or something relevant in general, there are at least a dozen other times that it serves as a comfort blanket/black hole of nostalgia and ubiquitous reference library for the past. At least that is how I explain away the all too often scenario of suddenly realizing I have spent 2 hours watching skate punk videos from junior-year-of-high-school-era on YouTube.

New York Noise is one of those great things that got cut short by reality but is now being slowly resurrected by the good archival graces of the world wide web. Having aired on NYC TV from 2003 to 2009 (or according to loveable producer Shirley Braha, 5 years and 8 months – the same amount of time as the original run of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air) New York Noise brought us a twice-weekly hour of amazing music public television covering every indie band that even remotely thought about setting foot in the tri-state area.

Slowly but surely, clips from the 89 episode run of the show are being uploaded to an online collection here. You can also browse through old photos and playlists featuring hundreds of bands like the Hold Steady, Panda Bear, Mae Shi, The Dodos, the list goes on and on. Actually, I wish I could say the list was as endless as it feels, but I guess that’s what our friend, the Internet is here for.