Mistletone

Mistletone is ecstatic to share “Cyclamen” from The Orbweavers’ new album Deep Leads, out September 15 on Mistletone Records via Inertia. Listen below:

Cyclamen Artist Statement

Subjects: plants, soil types, seasons, cycles, sleep, photosynthesis, classical mythology, quest

An evening invocation for protection through winter, and deep sleep. Cyclamen are associated with the Ancient Greek goddess Hecate, who is often depicted holding torches. Hecate in turn, is associated with knowledge of poisonous and medicinal plants, a mediator between mortal and divine realms, a goddess of the crossroads.

“We love bossa nova, and the cyclamen flower”, explain Marita Dyson and Stuart Flanagan (The Orbweavers). “Last winter we had a row of coloured cyclamen across the backsteps. They glowed like little torches against the grey weather of decay and transition. We listened to a lot of Stan Getz, Joao and Astrud Gilberto that winter, and looked out at the scarlet, purple, crimson and white cyclamen torches as night approached.”

“Cyclamen” springs from Deep Leads, the eagerly awaited new album by The Orbweavers following 2011’s Loom.

“Deep Leads is about buried and hidden things. Mining the land, the body and mind. Old rivers of feeling. Poison/panacea. Extraction/preservation. Escapism/courage. Deep sleep. Cycles of decay and return.

“Geologically, deep leads are buried ancient river beds which sometimes contain alluvial gold. In Victoria, they usually lie beneath basalt lava flows which hold younger waterways on the surface above. Deep lead gold mining required cutting deep, dangerous shafts through hardened volcanic rock. The shafts were at risk of cave ins and flooding from aquifers, and often did not contain the gold hoped for.

“To use this geology as a metaphor, Deep Leads is the underlying layer to our previous album Loom. Where Loom explored the basalt bed and surrounds of the younger Merri Creek waterway, Deep Leads heads underground and within, exploring industrial, agricultural and personal histories (Blue Lake, The Dry, A Very Long Time), heavy and precious metals (Radium Girls, Mine), internal realms of escape and quest (Poison Garden, Cyclamen, Nitrates). We recorded and produced Deep Leads at home in the Merri Creek water catchment area. There are many accretions of history along this waterway, and it always seems to find a way in to our work and life. The street we live in is a storm water course to the Merri. The album was mixed by the banks of the Merri in East Brunswick by James Cecil at Super Melody World, and mastered just uphill to the west, on Brunswick high ground, by Adam Dempsey at Deluxe Mastering Melbourne.” 

Cyclamen Lyrics

I will stay these winter days,
With cyclamen as torches,
Beacons against the grey weathering in my head.
Clay feet,
Sink close,
Sleep deeply.

Evening falls,
Unfamiliar ways;
With cyclamen as torches,
Lead me back to where it was I first heard your name.
Clay feet Proceed,
Fearlessly.

Scarlet, purple, crimson and white,
Give me a vision to take through the night,
Where you return is where we are heading,
Earth is a bed,
And sleep is remembering.

Scarlet, purple, crimson and white,
Dormant receiver storing the light,
Who is a thief and who’s a collector?
I invoke you:
Be my protector.
Remembering.

Mistletone Records is proud to share “Selling Good News” by Ross McLennan, the first single from his forthcoming album All the colours print can manage, out October 6 on Mistletone / Inertia.

Ross McLennan and his 10 piece band The New World will preview the new album in a rare live performance at Melbourne’s Post Office Hotel on Sunday September 24 at 4:30pm.

• “McLennan puts a lot of himself into what he writes, each record is a reasonably accurate snapshot of his mental health; (and) his fourth solo record sees him balance his love of pop with some of the darker themes that naturally find their way into his songs. Anyone who has followed McLennan’s post-Snout work knows that the quality of his output hasn’t deteriorated in the slightest. Perhaps that’s because McLennan knows he must remain true to himself. It’s what McLennan has done throughout his entire career, and we’re all the richer for it” – DOUBLE J

A singular and illuminating songwriter, Ross McLennan dives deep into the collective subconscious whilst touching raw nerves which reverberate the anxieties of our times, giving his songs a revelatory and prophetic aura. The Ross McLennan hit factory has been open for business since 1991, when he formed Melbourne indie trio Snout and made an indelible impression on the Australian musical landscape throughout the 1990s. As Double J recently commented in their retrospective of Snout’s career: “Their shrewd handle on pop in all its forms meant that they could employ diverse influences into their sound – sometimes heavy, sometimes groovy, sometimes jangly – yet emerge sounding completely cohesive”. Since disbanding Snout, McLennan has made three unfailingly excellent solo albums and been shortlisted for the Amp (Australian Music Prize). Accompanied by his ensemble of strings, woodwind and a choir, Ross McLennan has manifested magical performances at Melbourne Festival, Brisbane Festival, Queenscliff Music Festival, Brisbane Powerhouse and the Famous Spiegeltent, and supported artists such as Cass McCombs and Matthew E. White.

All the colours print can manage is the title of the forthcoming Ross McLennan album and a phrase from the song “Selling Good News”. As McLennan explains, “it refers to very human visions of paradise: pictures fleshed out in hues from a colour matching booklet. The colours have corresponding numbers. The colours might look different depending on the paper stock they are printed on, and the light in which they are viewed. The people in the pictures are wearing clothes in a modern neat casual style. Complete families have died and are strolling peacefully through paradise with all their limbs intact. This is not so different to how the narrator views the world.

“Some of the songs on this record are hopeful, some not”, McLennan reflects. “This album took five or so years to make, and there Is a whole other album on the cutting room floor. But I needed to get the balance between light and shade right.

“I wanted to make a charitable album. To have some things that you could dance to and smile about, but not sell out sadness and despair. Across the record, there is a corresponding tension between physical reality and the mental drift to abstraction/distortion, the connected and the dissociative. There are the iron clad rules of the rotating earth and then there is a banana peel. The narrator has foot in each camp.”

So delighted to announce that Toro y Moi is back with his fifth studio album Boo Boo, out July 7 on Mistletone Records via Inertia. Boo Boo finds Chaz Bear (formerly Bundick) exploring the dance-pop sound that his fans first fell in love with, with an added layer of deep, and at times dark, emotion.

Along with the news, Toro y Moi has released a vignette for the magnetic first single “Girl Like You”; watch it below.

Head over to Mistletone mail order to pre-order limited edition LPs, pressed on blue and white marble-colored vinyl while stocks last.

Photo by Shawn Brackbill

On Friday, June 30, Beach House will release the B-Sides and Rarities album — a 14-track compilation of songs from throughout their career so far — on Mistletone Records, via Inertia. The album features two previously unreleased tracks, “Chariot” [listen below] and “Baseball Diamond,” which were recorded during the Depression Cherry and Thank Your Lucky Stars sessions (both Depression Cherry and Thank Your Lucky Stars were released, two months apart, in 2015). Beach House’s B-Sides and Rarities will be released on CD / LP / DL and is available on digital pre-order now. Pre-orders are now open for Loser edition limited clear vinyl and CDs; while stocks last — pre-order LPs and CDs here.

B-Sides and Rarities contains every song Beach House – aka Alex Scally and Victoria Legrand – has made that does not exist on one of their albums. Beach House says of the release:

WHEN WE ANNOUNCED that we were releasing a B-sides and rarities album, someone on Twitter asked, “B-sides record? Why would Beach House put out a B-sides record? Their A-sides are like B-sides.” This random person has a point. Our goal has never been to make music that is explicitly commercial. Over the years, as we have worked on our 6 LPs, it wasn’t the “best” or most catchy songs that made the records, just the ones that fit together to make a cohesive work. Accordingly, our B-sides are not songs that we didn’t like as much, just ones that didn’t have a place on the records we were making.

The idea for a B-sides record came when we realised just how many non-album songs had been made over the years, and how hard it was to find and hear many of them. This compilation contains every song we have ever made that does not exist on one of our records. There are 14 songs in total.

The oldest song is “Rain in Numbers” and was recorded in 2005, during the summer we formed the band. We didn’t have a piano, so we asked our friend if we could use his, which was pretty out of tune. We used the mic that was on the four-track machine to record the piano and vocals. It was originally the secret song on our self-titled debut.

Sequentially, the next couple of songs are from late 2008. We were so excited about “Used to Be,” that we recorded it right after writing it so that we could have it as a 7” single for our fall tour with the Baltimore Round Robin. We recorded our cover of Queen’s “Play the Game” in the same session. It was for a charity compilation benefiting AIDS research and we will continue to donate all profits from the song to that charity. As fans of Queen, we thought it would be fun and ridiculous to try to adapt their high-powered pop song into our realm. These songs were recorded at the same studio where we made Devotion.

There are a bunch of songs written and recorded in the 2009-2010 window. This period of time, as well as 2014, was our most prolific to date. “Baby” was written and recorded in October 2009 with our friend Jason Quever. “10 Mile Stereo” was recorded during the Teen Dream session in July 2009. Since we used tape, we often slowed the tape way down to create effects while recording. When we were doing that for “10 Mile Stereo” we decided we wanted to make an alternate version where the whole song was slowed down, hence the “10 Mile Stereo (Cough Syrup Remix).”

“White Moon” and “The Arrangement” were both songs that we didn’t believe fit on Teen Dream. “White Moon” originally appeared on our iTunes live session. Since that was recorded and mixed very hastily, we have remixed it to better match our current aesthetics. We have also remixed and included the version of “Norway” we did at that same session. The main reason we wanted to include “Norway” is that it features a very different bridge from the original version.

After the insane year of touring we had in 2010, we felt incredibly grateful to our fans for all that had happened. We wrote and recorded “I Do Not Care for the Winter Sun” during a break between tours and released it on the internet for free, unmastered. Well, it’s finally been mastered…

“Wherever You Go” Is another song from that era.  We always loved this song but thought it sounded too much like our old music. We paused writing it and didn’t finish it until 2011 during the Bloom recording session. It appeared originally as a secret song on Bloom.

“Equal Mind” was also recorded during the Bloom session. We really like this song, but pulled it from the record when we realized it had the exact same tempo as “Other People.” They are like twins.

The Bloom sessions led to “Saturn Song” as well. This song is built on a piano loop we wrote while recording Bloom. It also contains sounds recorded in deep space. It originally appeared on a compilation of songs incorporating space sounds that was released in 2014.

Finally, there are two previously unreleased songs from the Depression Cherry / Thank Your Lucky Stars sessions. They are called “Chariot” and “Baseball Diamond.”

B-Sides and Rarities (out June 30 on Mistletone / Inertia):

01 Chariot
02 Baby
03 Equal Mind
04 Used to Be (2008 Single Version)
05 White Moon (iTunes Session Remix)
06 Baseball Diamond
07 Norway (iTunes Session Remix)
08 Play the Game (Queen Cover)
09 The Arrangement
10 Saturn Song
11 Rain in Numbers
12 I Do Not Care For The Winter Sun
13 10 Mile Stereo (Cough Syrup Remix)
14 Wherever You Go

Artwork by Carl Breitkreuz

STEVE GUNN TOUR DATES:

• SYDNEY: Thursday July 6 @ The Basement with special guest Angie. Tickets on sale now.
• MELBOURNE: Friday July 7 @ NGV Friday Nights, The Great Hall, NGV International. Doors open 6pm, Steve Gunn from 8.30pm. * SOLD OUT
• MELBOURNE: Saturday July 8 @ Northcote Social Club with special guests Jess Ribeiro + Andrew Tuttle. Tickets on sale now.
• BRISBANE: Sunday July 9 @ The Junk Bar. Tickets on sale now. *Matinee show added by popular demand; 4pm doors for 4:30pm start, tickets on sale now.

Mistletone is joyous to present consummate American singer-songwriter & guitarist Steve Gunn, coming to Australia for the first time on a soul expanding solo tour.

• “Brooklyn’s Steve Gunn is the Ty Segall of Americana, a prolific musician who has released 13 albums since 2007, some with like-minded strummers such as Kurt Vile and Hiss Golden Messenger, others solo records such as 2013’s acclaimed Way Out Weather. In other words, he’s the hipster-friendly guitar slinger of the moment, in the spirit of John Fahey or Robbie Basho, with a lovely sun-glazed lilt to his fluid fingersmithery. On Eyes On the Lines, he pairs his pastoral leanings with tales of uncertainty; Night Wander meanders through nocturnal roots with the repetitiveness of a raga; Conditions Wild’s boppy pace and falsetto channels the 1960s; Park Bench Smile coasts along on rolling drums and a shamanic, moonlit arrangement. Gunn’s voice is so mellow that the songs’ words fade into the background at times – but then the guitar is the frontman here” – THE GUARDIAN ★★★★
• “So intimate and so mysteriously distant all at once” – WASHINGTON POST
• ★★★★ – MOJO

Steve Gunn’s music has always embraced expanse and movement. It springs from the simple and profound relationship between humans and their environment. Gunn’s most recent album and his debut for Matador, Eyes On The Lines (out now via Remote Control), is his most explicit ode to the blissful uncertainty of adventure yet. His brilliant previous album Way Out Weather (Mistletone, 2014) is still available on Mistletone mail order.

Gunn’s roots in the underground run deep, from his days in GHQ to his collaborations with Black Twig Pickers and Mike Cooper. He’s toured and recorded with Michael Chapman, and released two remarkable duo albums with drummer John Truscinski. His solo ventures, emerging over the past decade and culminating most recently the highly-acclaimed Way Out Weather, have been pastoral, evocative affairs. Here he embraces his urban surroundings through a series of songs that fully showcase his extraordinary ability to match hooks to deftly constructed melodies. Gunn is a consummate guitarist, that rare fingerpicker who can harness the enigma of the American Primitive vernacular without lazily regurgitating it. His playing is inventive and full of personality. His instrumental virtuosity calls upon a vast library of technical skills at will, but he’s never showy — his riffs and runs are always in the service of the song at hand.

And what a pleasure to have this music presented to the wider public.

The Eyes On The Lines song cycle melds thoughtful inquisitiveness with poetic reflection, fully embracing rhythmic uplift, allowing personal stories and impressions to live their own lives on their own terms. Gunn is more narrator than diarist; he pours real-life moments and real-life people into vibrant and evocative tales. Dreams and encounters spiral out – they form their own dramas and illuminate their own truths. Indeed, Eyes On The Lines works like a book of the finest short stories, its songs interlocking with an urgent necessity, forming an ever-questioning whole. In Gunn’s own words: “The music isn’t about me. It’s about characters, either real or fictional. It’s about images.”

And what are lines if not one of the foundational aspects of images? Lines on the road draw one’s attention to the lines comprising the landscape. Gunn’s music runs ahead and twists – like time, like the road itself. Guitar lines are highway lines are lines carved by the view out the window are the lines one waits in to get a quick meal on the way from one destination to another are lines one draws in the van to stay amused. It’s good to be out on the road and it’s good to be home, and each feeds into the other. This record sees lines run together and leap across one another.

He’s honest about the necessity of being comfortable in being lost. His music values the unknown, so it is always born of the present. We lose ourselves to find ourselves. With all of this comes humility. And gratitude. Listen to “Nature Driver,” a statement of thankfulness for the generosity of the plethora of kind souls who welcome travelers into their homes.

“Ancient Jules,” which opens the record, is a travel fantasy of a different sort. Built around a head-nodding motif, the song bobs and weaves its way through a tale which foregrounds the surprising joy that can come with a break – a deep sigh in the midst of an onrush, punctuated by the finest example of Gunn’s electric soloing to emerge yet. A song like “Conditions Wild” also rambles through strange clouds of roving. Interlocking strings, percussion, and vocals join in an irrepressible rush. This record is like that – the songs get lodged in one’s head because they’re catchy, but their atmosphere sends the mind reeling into memory and mystery.

These are songs you can take in quickly, but spend all the time in the world devouring. The very large and the very small are present in equal measure. The inability to categorize them within the avalanche of impotent diatribes that pass for categorization is a testament to their power.

Stories give us ways to discover meaning. They provide us with signposts – when we recognize our own lives within them, we clarify our existence. “Far from the world is the mystic fool,” Gunn sings on the opening track. The fool may be far from the world, but that doesn’t matter. The so-called fool is jacked in to the cosmos.

THE FIELD TOUR DATES:

• SYDNEY: Friday March 10 @ Oxford Art Factory with special guest Lucy Cliche. Late night show, only Australian club show. Limited early bird tickets on sale now.
• VICTORIA: March 11-13 @ Pitch Music & Arts. Lineup and tickets info here.

Legendary Swedish instrumentalist and producer The Field returns to Australia for the new, all ages Pitch Music Festival, March 10-13 2017. Sign up here for full lineup and limited tickets.

Back in Australia to showcase his brilliant new album THE FOLLOWER, The Field’s fifth full-length offering after “From Here We Go Sublime” (KOMPAKT RSD 02 CD 57), “Yesterday And Today” (KOMPAKT 193 CD 72), “Looping State Of Mind” (KOMPAKT 241 CD 94) and “Cupid’s Head” (KOMPAKT 290 CD 110). Swedish soundsmith Axel Willner is well-known for his mastery when it comes to the allusive layering of loops, but it was with his last album “Cupid’s Head” that a newly-found, somewhat pressing snappishness started to replace the soft-hued sonics of his ambient-infused techno, imbued with a darker mood and stronger footing than before. A carefully gauged balance of stoic motorik and gloomy drones was key here – just as it is for THE FOLLOWER which goes even further in blurring the lines between concrete experimentation, body music and precisely laid-out arrangement, leading to one of the most rhythmically and texturally engaging listening experiences in Willner’s catalogue.

“As always when starting a new album, I wanted to do something that sounds fresh, but doesn’t stray too far from what I have so far done as THE FIELD – and that’s always the tricky part”, says Willner, adding that “the whole album came around through experimenting with a lot of new recording equipment and gear”. That source of inspiration seems to have worked rather well, with title track THE FOLLOWER opening on a surprisingly muscular groove and setting the tone for what could be considered THE FIELD’s most floor-attuned work yet – a raw bounce dripping with foggy acid and marching percussion catches long-standing fans off-guard while providing a perfect entry point for curious newcomers. Pulling no punches, Willner’s knack for entwined drones and mutating loops is very much in place, but finds powerful support in an excitingly sturdy bassline and guitar-like screeches. It’s been a few years since THE FIELD’s band dissolved, which led to more club-oriented live gigs – an experience that definitely informed THE FOLLOWER’s sound without interrupting this very personal continuum of expressive means. This is ambient techno on steroids, with a dose of metal machine music for good measure.

Follow-up cut PINK SUN quickly finds its pace with one of these perpetually rotating hooks Willner is known for, while MONTE VERIT specializes in tunefully glitched vocal samples with accompanying bass workout – a powerful and propelling album build-up that finds its first moment of introspection with the mountainous SOFT STREAMS, an exciting synth journey that emits both ethereal and kinetic propensities. RAISE THE DEAD presents THE FIELD’s focussed sonic storytelling at its minimalist best, gyrating around a basic motive for a while before joining an earthy beat and opening up the sunshine roof. It’s a winding, hypnotic track that also works particularly well as transition to the album’s remarkable closing chapter: the slow-paced REFLECTING LIGHTS shows Willner at his most refined, evoking his often-quoted appreciation of Wolfgang Voigt’s ambient project GAS as well as an obvious fondness for kraut synthesists and their trance-inducing exploits. “‘The Follower’ is about old myths, finding utopia and how mankind repeatedly makes the same mistakes over and over”, explains Willner, but he remains an artist who prefers keeping things uncommented and the mistery intact – his latest full-length certainly doesn’t need more introductions: it evidently shows a maturity and consistent evolution of THE FIELD’s trademark style of creation, but may very well be considered one of his most vibrant and visceral outings yet.

Artwork by Robert Scott; design by Alex Fregon

THE BATS TOUR DATES:

• MELBOURNE: Saturday 28 January @ Northcote Social Club. The Deep Set album launch with special guests Loose Tooth + School Damage. Tickets on sale now from NSC.
• SYDNEY: Sunday 29 January @ Magic Mirrors Spiegeltent, Sydney Festival. The Bats perform The Deep Set in full, followed by a “greatest hits” set. Tickets on sale now from Sydney Festival.

“Four decades into their career, The Bats continue to produce sparkling and chiming pop that sounds as fresh now as it does when David Lange was New Zealand’s Prime Minister” – NOISEY

Legendary Flying Nun flag-bearers The Bats prove their everlasting songfulness with a brilliant new album, The Deep Set (out January 27 on Flying Nun). The band has shared the soaring first single, “Antlers”, and announced an Australian tour, performing The Deep Set in full at Sydney Festival with a string section, plus a Melbourne album launch at Northcote Social Club.

Listen to “Antlers”:

Five years after the release of their last critically acclaimed album, The Bats return with album number nine, The Deep Set. With the title conveying the long established and firmly embedded, it’s notable that it’s 30 years since The Bats began recording their debut album in the living room studio of a friend of a friend in Glasgow. This time around they recorded in The Sitting Room, the studio-sleep out-garage next to Ben Edward’s house in Lyttelton, New Zealand; following in the footsteps of Marlon Williams, Nadia Reid and many others.

With Ben Edward’s help, The Deep Set continues The Bats’ 21st century resurgence. Yes, this is The Bats so the chords still chug, the guitars chime, ring, and jangle, the melodies are clear and memorable, the rhythm section is unstoppable. But the band mines the darker, deeper sound that 2011’s Free All the Monsters revealed.

The songs remain reflective but that oft-expected sweet folksiness pops up less frequently. As the title suggests the music is richer, expansive, deeper. In their fourth decade as a band familiarity has come to mean a more careful treatment of each song. Is it maturity? It definitely translates into more depth and complexity but hey the songs are still as catchy as all hell. And as a lyricist, Robert Scott continues his mastery of the personal and pastoral, the landscape and longing.

As always the key to The Bats is the emotion that their (seemingly) simple songs carry. They continue to mine that Mainland melancholy; the kind that somehow never risks being depressing. But of course that means there is lament and nostalgia, even if it’s only for last night. Taking us from the sun of Otago’s Taieri River to darkest Durkestan and apparently ending in the midst of contemporary New Zealand politics, The Deep Set continues the composed confidence of their recent albums with one of The Bats’ strongest sets of songs, fueled by ever-more powerful guitars.

If you grew up with The Bats their early recordings will always pull at your emotions but while less vulnerable and immediate than on their classic debut album, The Bats of the 21st century somehow manage to be more intimate and urgent.

Artwork by Carl Breitkreuz

Mistletone proudly presents the return of Toro y Moi.

TORO Y MOI TOUR DATES:

• ADELAIDE: Friday, March 3 @ Adelaide Festival. Tickets on sale now.
• PERTH: Sunday, March 5 @ Perth Festival. Tickets on sale now.
• SYDNEY: Thursday, March 9 @ Oxford Art Factory with Felix Lush + SKULL AND DAGGER. Tickets on sale now. * SELLING FAST!
• BRISBANE: Friday, March 10 @ The Zoo with S>c>r>a>p>s + Spirit Bunny. Tickets on sale now. * SELLING FAST!
• SYDNEY: Saturday, March 11 @ Days Like This Festival. Tickets on sale now.
• VICTORIA: March 10-13 @ Pitch Music & Arts. Lineup and tickets info here.

Born and raised in Columbia, South Carolina, Chaz Bundick unveiled his Toro y Moi guise in 2001, channeling a wide swath of stylistic influences from indie rock and ‘60s baroque pop to ‘80s R&B, French house and underground hip-hop. By the time he graduated from the University of South Carolina in 2009 in graphic design, Chaz had refined Toro y Moi into a captivating project, his hazy recordings touted as the sound of summer. His Mistletone-released debut album, Causers of This, followed in 2010 and garnered high praise from NME and Pitchfork. Chaz has proven to be as prolific as he is diverse, always pointing Toro y Moi in new directions while never sacrificing his melodic sensibility or keen ear for arrangements and texture. With 2011’s Underneath the Pine, he delivered a set of motorik space-age funk; his Freaking Out EP brought ‘80s-inspired R&B, freestyle, and quiet storm soul, and 2013’s Anything in Return effortlessly glided between smoky 4/4 house-tinged pop, electro-funk and late-night electronic soul. What For? captured the feel of a rock band playing together in the same room with members of his touring group as well as guest musicians like Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s Ruban Nielson.

Last year Toro y Moi released Live From Trona, filmed in the middle of the Mojave desert; an entire concert album recorded live beneath the geological wonders known as the Trona Pinnacles. With a spectacular natural environment that feels otherworldly, the film pays homage to rock films of a previous era. As the sun sets behind the pinnacles, which formed thousands of years ago in what used to be a prehistoric lake, the supernatural setting weaves seamlessly together with 13 psychedelic tracks. Live From Trona offers viewers a surreal concert experience, placing them front row at a private Toro y Moi show.

Toro y Moi pic by Jordan Blackmon

Given the state of modern music and its fabricated pop icons, what Chaz Bundick Meets The Mattson 2 achieves is a collective music victory in a new era of progressive soundscapes. Chaz has teamed up with the psychedelic-jazz grooves of The Mattson 2 for an album that unifies a trio’s creativity into a refreshing project of unhinged sonic originality.

Oddly enough, this collaboration may not have happened if The Mattson 2 hadn’t forgotten a drum throne at an Oakland performance in 2014. The twin’s longtime friend and photographer, Andrew Paynter, came to the rescue and called his friend Chaz to ask about borrowing the throne. Jonathan, the Mattson drummer (who’d also never met Chaz), accompanied Andrew to Chaz’s home in Berkeley where they were greeted by Chaz with a warm smile, a drum stool in hand, and Michael, Chaz’s dog (which his Les Sins record Michael is named after).

The next day Andrew and the twins met Chaz at a cafe in Berkeley to return the gear. Over coffee they waxed about music, design, furniture, and skateboarding. After a series of hangs with Chaz in the Bay Area, the crew decided to join forces and schedule studio time for their newfound trio. And the rest, as they say, is intergalactic, mega-creative history.

In February of 2016 the relationship was officially christened the night they finished tracking their new record. And to tie the knot with flare, they scheduled a secret show at the Battery and a historical public show at the Starline Social Club in Oakland, where the trio performed all new music from the project for the first time live.

The group and the album, Chaz Bundick Meets Mattson 2, explores psychedelic, jazz, and improvisatory influences ranging from Afrofuturistic Sun Ra, to electric Miles Davis, to groove-fueled Serge Gainsbourg and The Zombies. Grounding the album are break-beats, synthesizers, acoustic strums, and guitar fuzz reminiscent of David Axelrod and Arthur Verocai. With cosmic structures, timeless influences, rich harmonies, and melodic interplays, the trio brings an intergalactic edge to both their live shows and an album worthy of repeated visits.

Toro Y Moi: Live From Trona from Primary Colors on Vimeo.

Artwork by Ben Montero, layout by Carl Breitkreuz

Mistletone very proudly presents Kurt Vile, returning to Australia for a supreme solo tour.

KURT VILE SOLO TOUR DATES:

• PERTH: Monday February 27 @ Perth Festival. Tickets on sale now. *SELLING FAST!
• PERTH: Tuesday February 28 @ Perth Festival * SOLD OUT!
• SYDNEY: Friday 3rd March @ Taronga Zoo. Supported by Mick Turner. Tickets via Taronga Zoo. *SELLING FAST!
• MELBOURNE: Saturday 4th March @ Melbourne Zoo. Supported by Mick Turner. *SOLD OUT!
• MEENIYAN: Sunday 5th March @ Meeniyan Town Hall. Supported by Jess Ribeiro. * SOLD OUT!
• BRISBANE: Thursday 9th March @ Queensland Performing Arts Centre. Supported by Mick Turner. Tickets via Qpac.
• MELBOURNE: Friday 10th March @ Northcote Social Club. Supported by Lost Animal + Tammy Haider. * SOLD OUT!
• MEREDITH: Saturday 11th March @ Golden Plains Festival. * SOLD OUT!
• TASMANIA: Sunday 12th March @ A Festival Called Panama. *SOLD OUT!
• ADELAIDE: Tuesday 14th March + Thursday 16th March @ Adelaide Festival. Ticket info via website.

• “The music is quiet and the melody, like a hymn, folds in on itself, and embraces full strength in a sexy, floating forcelessness that slowly gathers into a wave that doesn’t go where you think it will” – KIM GORDON
• “The former forklift driver is now one of the most adored artists around. He has a canon of cool songs: feelgood, insightful, reflective, comforting, jubilant tunes. It’s been a slow burn, but he hasn’t put a foot wrong – he’s one of only a few that you’d trust to still be making cool music decades from now. Give Kurt Vile’s music some little chunks of your life and you will be rewarded. Handsomely” – AUNTY MEREDITH

Since releasing his debut solo album Constant Hitmaker in 2008, Kurt Vile has ascended to an elevated stature as one of the most accomplished and charismatic songwriters of our time. A firm favourite with Australian audiences, KV has packed out rooms across Australia (including Sydney Opera House earlier this year, with his band The Violators).

Kurt’s latest album b’lieve i’m goin down…, released last year via Matador / Remote Control, won universal acclaim; The AV Club called “the purest distillation of Vile’s idiosyncratic style to date”, and Pitchfork bestowed it Best New Music, noting: “Kurt Vile has a persona, and you know him by now: He is the weird quiet kid in the corner, the one who seems at first lost in his own world and disconnected from everything around him, but turns out to be smart, observant, and low-key hilarious. So while his albums draw you in with the vibe—the impeccably recorded and mixed songs that shuffle bits of folk, new wave, or country in the mix but are always squarely down-the-middle rock—you return to them for their human qualities, the way they offer a manner of seeing the world, a glimpse at a perspective that feels both voyeuristic and easy to connect to your own life.”

Last year, Kurt told Rolling Stone that he wanted b’lieve i’m goin down… “to sound like it’s on my couch”, citing Neil Young’s After the Gold Rush as a reference point. “Not in a lo-fi way,” he explained, “just more unguarded and vulnerable. I wanted it to feel like I was on a couch in a familiar living room even if I was somewhere else. To me, it’s sort of that home vibe that I had to capture somehow…to make it sound like it was played there in the room.”

This intimate and immediate power that Kurt Vile’s songs possess is one of the qualities that KV fans hold dear to their hearts, and it will be in generous supply on this rare and auspicious occasion of a Kurt Vile solo tour.

Kurt’s friend Mick Turner will be opening for him at Sydney’s Taronga Zoo, Melbourne Zooand Queensland Performing Arts Centre, performing his highly acclaimed solo work. Mick Turner has had a dynamic and celebrated career as founding member of Dirty Three and simultaneously with his solo project, releasing four LPs on the iconic US label Drag City (Bill Callahan, Joanna Newsom, Ty Segall) with The Australian labelling him “one of Australia’s most distinctive guitarists.”

EL GUINCHO TOUR DATES:

• SYDNEY: Wednesday February 15 @ Oxford Art Factory with special guest Donny Benet. Tickets on sale now.
• MELBOURNE: Thursday February 16 @ Howler with special guests Sui Zhen + NO ZU DJs. Tickets on sale now.
• MELBOURNE: Friday February 17 @ NGV Friday Nights. Tickets & info available from NGV.
• PERTH: Saturday February 18 @ Perth Festival with Skinnyfish Sound System. Tickets on sale now.

A favourite with Australian audiences, El Guincho has transformed huge crowds into ecstatic tropical dance parties at Meredith Music Festival and Laneway. Emerging from a five year break, Canary Islands-born Pablo Díaz-Reixa — or El Guincho, as he is known and loved — shared a new album, HiperAsia, earlier this year.

Released locally via Mistletone, HiperAsia is another enormous musical leap for El Guincho, inspired by a chain of Chinese bazaars in the outskirts of Madrid where Pablo now lives, having written, recorded and produced the album in studios and spaces throughout Spain; in the Canary Islands, Barcelona and finally Madrid, in a chaotic period for Southern Europe. The music that has emerged is immediately disconcerting; prickly, bright and uncompromising and demanding, it has resonated with a whole new audience of El Guincho fans.

Ever the innovator, El Guincho is reinventing music distribution, having launched his HiperAsia collection with wearable tech which comes with NFC (Near Field Communication) technology and an animated Vaporwave short film. El Guincho changed the face of music videos with his viral hit “Bombay” (over 2.3 million hits), which echoes in his wild new videos for “Comix” and “Pizza” (see bel0w). He has recently been nominated for a Latin Grammy Award for Best Short Form Music Video for “Comix”.

•  “El Guincho’s most resolutely electronic work yet, Hiperasia buzzes like an ice-cream headache (and) reaches frequencies most indie-electronic fusions never knew existed” – PITCHFORK
•  “A vivid, feverish soundworld of Auto-Tuned vocals, idyllic electronics and machine beats solid enough to stand alongside the best US R&B currently has to offer” – THE WIRE

EL GUINCHO ‘Comix’ Feat. La Mala Rodríguez from CANADA on Vimeo.