Mistletone and Triple R very proudly present the return of the mighty Kurt Vile & the Violators, hot on the heels of Kurt Vile’s glorious new album b’lieve i’m goin down… , out now on Matador via Remote Control. Last time Kurt Vile came around these parts, he was the hottest ticket in town — so fans would be well advised to book tickets without delay!
KURT VILE & THE VIOLATORS TOUR DATES:
DEC 28 – JAN 1: FALLS FESTIVAL Lorne, Marion Bay + Byron Bay. More info here.
JAN 8-10: SOUTHBOUND FESTIVAL, Busselton WA. More info here.
MELBOURNE: Sunday, January 3 @THE FORUM THEATRE on with special guests Twerps and Scott & Charlene’s Wedding. Tickets on sale now via Ticketmaster. Presented by Triple R.
MELBOURNE: Tuesday, January 5 @ Max Watt’s with special guests Gold Class and Constant Mongrel. Tickets on sale now from Ticketscout.
SYDNEY:Thursday, January 7 @ Concert Hall, SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE. Tickets on sale now from Sydney Opera House Presents.
As kindred spirit Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth wrote in her artist biography for Kurt’s new album, “Kurt does his own myth making; a boy/man with an old soul voice in the age of digital everything becoming something else, which is why this focused, brilliantly clear and seemingly candid record is a breath of fresh air…. a handshake across the country, east to west coast, thru the dustbowl history (“valley of ashes”) of woody honest strait forward talk guthrie, and a cali canyon dead still nite floating in a nearly waterless landscape. The record is all air, weightless, bodyless, but grounded in convincing authenticity, in the best version of singer songwriter upcycling.”
As eponymous American Grantland magazine recently observed, “Kurt Vile frequently invokes Neil Young in conversation, as both a talisman and a role model. But the most authentic link between Vile and Young is the way in which they freely commingle pathos and goofiness in their songs, resulting in a tonal messiness that feels like real life.”
And as Pitchfork remarked in their Best New Music review: “As compelling as Vile’s words can be, much of the magic lies in his delivery. Like Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, and Bob Dylan, Vile’s singing voice has acquired an unstable accent of indeterminate origin that shifts to suit his musical decisions, rather than connecting to genre or region or even his own upbringing. Most often, he’s got a nasally twang unlike that of any other native Philadelphian, and it helps his low-key murmur cut through the wooly mid-tempo haze. That twang makes his music feel more grounded and conversational, and there’s also a bit of a “Hey, it’s me again” quality the first time you hear it on a new album, an aural watermark that never leaves you any doubt that you are listening to a Kurt Vile record.”
Watch Kurt Vile & the Violators nail their national TV performance of “Pretty Pimpin'” on “Conan”:
Mistletone, Fasterlouder, Triple R and FBi Radio proudly present the return of exhilarating indie-electronic party starters, Toro y Moi. Led by one of the world’s most forward-thinking producers, Chaz Bundick, and navigating a golden path from house to disco, electro-funk to indie rock, Toro y Moi bring the bangers to Sydney and Melbourne dancefloors this January, as well as playing Falls Festival (Lorne, Tasmania & Byron Bay) and Southbound Festival (WA).
TORO Y MOI TOUR DATES:
DEC 28 – JAN 1: FALLS FESTIVAL Lorne, Marion Bay + Byron Bay. More info + ticket ballots here.
JAN 8-10: SOUTHBOUND FESTIVAL, Busselton WA. More info here.
SYDNEY: Monday, January 4 @ OXFORD ART FACTORY with special guestsWorld Champion + DJ Jonti. Tickets on sale now from Moshtix. Presented by FBi Radio.
MELBOURNE: Wednesday, January 6 @MAX WATT’S with special guests Sui Zhen. Tickets on sale now from Ticketscout. Presented by Triple R.
2015 has been a bumper year for Toro y Moi, even by Chaz Bundick’s usual, wildly prolific standards. A producer and singer-songwriter of exceptional gifts and versatility, Chaz Bundick released the killer album What For? as Toro y Moi earlier this year. Recorded at home in San Francisco’s Bay Area, with Chaz’s meticulous production capturing the feel of a rock band playing together in the same room, cited Big Star, Talking Heads and Todd Rundgren, as well as the psychedelic soul of Brazilian legend Tim Maia and the ‘70s-era jazz-funk of France’s Cortex, as inspirations. It followed the clubtastic dance music outing Michael, Chaz’s first full-length release as Les Sins. And then Chaz trumped them all with the surprise-released Samantha, a brilliant 20-track Toro y Moi mixtape, shared as a free download via Dropbox and featuring collaborations with Washed Out, Kool A.D., SAFE, Rome Fortune, Nosaj Thing and SHORE.
“Part of the fun in following Chaz Bundick’s musical trajectory is hearing how he changes up his style from one project to the next. From Causers of This on, each Toro Y Moi release has been a subtle shakeup: 2011’s stellar Underneath the Pine laser-cut the corners of chillwave down to a fine point; 2013’s Anything in Return turned his songwriterly impulses into disco and pop gems; and, most recently, he channeled early experiments with garage and indie rock into this past April’s What For? But each project somehow sounds distinctly like Toro Y Moi, bound by Bundick’s unflagging production chops. The latest Toro Y Moi project, Samantha, is a free mixtape that piles together recordings from as far back as 2012 and as recent as last month. It serves as a neat way of tracking Bundick’s progression as a musician while prominently highlighting his talent for both beat-driven and atmospheric production” – PITCHFORK
Born and raised in Columbia, South Carolina, Chaz Bundick has been actively involved in music going back to his early teenage years playing in punk and indie rock bands. Chaz unveiled his Toro y Moi guise in 2001, in which he began incorporating electronics and channeling a wider swath of stylistic influences – from indie rock and ‘60s baroque pop to ‘80s R&B, French house and underground hip-hop – into his own solo music. By the time he graduated from the University of South Carolina in 2009 with a BA in graphic design, Bundick had refined Toro Y Moi into a truly unique, captivating project, with numerous music magazines and blogs touting his hazy recordings as the sound of summer. His Carpark-released debut album, Causers of This, would follow in early 2010 and garnered high praise in many publications including NME and Pitchfork.
Chaz Bundick has proven himself to be as prolific as he is diverse with his subsequent records, 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, trading the smeared production of Causers of This for a more crystalline sound that was still steeped in atmosphere, even without the aid of source material and drum machines. Toro y Moi’s Freaking Out EP, which came out later that year, brought ‘80s-inspired R&B, freestyle, and quiet storm soul into the 21st century via its shimmering digital sheen, and set the stage for 2013’s introspective Anything in Return, which effortlessly glided between smoky 4/4 house-tinged pop, electro-funk and late-night electronic soul.
Toro y Moi’s latest album, What For? features stereo-panned guitars sitting high in the mix next to buzzing synthesizers, funky keys and live drumming, recorded with members of the Toro y Moi touring group as well as guest musicians like Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s Ruban Nielson and multi-instrumentalist Julian Lynch all contributing to the sessions. Though What For? may be Toro y Moi’s most direct outing to date, the nostalgia and reflective essence of these songs remain very much his own.
“I’ve done electronic R&B and more traditional recorded type R&B stuff. I just wanted to see what else was out there,” Chaz says in describing the direction of the new album. “It’s all coming from the same mindset and point of creativity. It’s just me trying to take what I already have, and then taking it further.”
As Pitchfork commented on Toro y Moi’s new Samantha mixtape, “It’s a testament to Bundick’s innovation that he’s still finding ways to contort his signature sound into new shapes… That Samantha comes in the wake of the guitar-driven What For? makes the mixtape particularly welcome, like a palette cleanser to prepare us for wherever Bundick goes next.”
Click below to listen to “Pitch Black” featuring Atlanta, Georgia hip hop artist Rome Fortune, from Toro y Moi’s Samantha mixtape album:
And take a few moments to watch the stunningly beautiful new visual for “Half Dome” from What For?, directed by photographer R. Adam Prieto and entirely shot in Yosemite National Park. This breath-taking time-lapse video features panoramic views of Yosemite’s Half Dome, and will balance all your chakras:
Much adored Melbourne band The Orbweavers unveil their new single “Poison Garden”, an intoxicating lullaby for spring nights and relaxing times. “Poison Garden” is out now on digital release on Mistletone Records via Inertia; to buy on iTunes, click here.
“Poisonous plants have contributed to the development of essential medicines used for heart conditions, pain relief, in ophthalmological preparations, as antidotes, cancer treatments and more. This is a song about the astonishing power of common plants we grew up with” — Marita Dyson & Stuart Flanagan, The Orbweavers
“Stay away from the Oleander!” a constant warning through our childhood, all the more ominous because it seemed every suburban yard we played in possessed one of these attractive and deadly shrubs. And so, our education in the poison garden began. Next on the banned list were angel trumpets, their heady fragrance wafting through open windows on hot summer nights, spent blooms devoured by a swooning pet dog lolling on the lawn. Soon we learned the berries of the meila tree, and jaunty foxglove borders held hazardous potential. This led to a lifelong interest in the properties of toxic and medicinal plants: beauty and power in the most ordinary places. If you’re looking to improve your overall health, I recommend you read this Gellati Weed Strain Review by Freshbros.
“Poison Garden” is released with a vivid, technicolour botanical video by Berlin-based Australian artist, animator and award-winning music-video director, Lucy Dyson. Lucy has produced and directed music videos for artists including Gotye, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Gemma Ray, Giant Sand, Ray LaMontagne and more.
Saturday 30 January: Laneway Singapore @ The Meadow, Gardens By The Bay, Singapore Monday, 1st February: Laneway Auckland @ Silo Park, Auckland Wednesday, 3rd February:Sydney Opera House. Tickets on sale here. Friday, 5th February: Laneway Adelaide @ Harts Mill, Adelaide Saturday, 6th February: Laneway Brisbane @ Brisbane Showgrounds, Bowen Hills Sunday, 7th February: Laneway Sydney @ Sydney College Of The Arts, Rozelle Wednesday, 10th February: MELBOURNE headline show @ 170 Russell with special guests to be announced. Presented by Triple R. Tickets on sale now. * SELLING FAST! Saturday, 13th February: Laneway Melbourne @ Footscray Community Arts Centre, Melbourne Sunday, 14th February: Laneway Fremantle @ Esplanade Reserve and West End, Fremantle
Mistletone is elated that Beach House are touring Australia, New Zealand and Singapore as part of the humungous Laneway Festival 2016 lineup. Laneway tickets on sale now from here. Beach House will also bring their swoonsome live show to Melbourne for an intimate Laneway Festival sideshow at 170 Russell on Wednesday, February 10 with special guests to be announced.
Note: Sydney Beach House fans are asked to stay tuned for the announcement of a special Beach House show in the near future.
Beach House devotees everywhere were set swooning with the surprise announcement that the band will release a brand new album Thank Your Lucky Stars — their sixth album, and the second album for 2015, following the rapturously received Depression Cherry. Thank Your Lucky Stars is out now on CD, digital and on vinyl on Mistletone Records, via Inertia Music (CD version to follow).
You can order Thank Your Lucky Stars on Loser edition green vinyl from Mistletone mail order while supplies last.
A note from Beach House:
Thank Your Lucky Stars is our 6th full length record. It was written after Depression Cherry from July 2014 – November 2014 and recorded during the same session as Depression Cherry. The songs came together very quickly and were driven by the lyrics and the narrative. In this way, the record feels very new for us, and a great departure from our last few records. Thematically, this record often feels political. It’s hard to put it into words, but something about the record made us want to release it without the normal “campaign.” We wanted it to simply enter the world and exist.
Thank you very much, Beach House
Thank Your Lucky Stars:
01 Majorette
02 She’s So Lovely
03 All Your Yeahs
04 One Thing
05 Common Girl
06 The Traveller
07 Elegy to the Void
08 Rough Song
09 Somewhere Tonight
Depression Cherry, the band’s fifth album featuring the highlights ‘Sparks’, ‘Space Song’, ‘PPP’ and ‘Days of Candy’, was produced and recorded by the band and Chris Coady at Studio in the Country in Bogalusa, Louisiana.
“Beach House’s ascent into unexpected commercial success — 2012’s Bloom debuted in the US Top 10 — has come seemingly at odds with their music. The Baltimore duo of Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally makes slow-burning music, building melancholy songs from droning organ chords and dangling slide guitar. Their fifth album, Depression Cherry, stays true to their sound while sounding undeniably bigger” – THE BIG ISSUE AUSTRALIA ★★★★
“It starts with opener Levitation, all floating organs, arpeggiated synths, and Alex Scally’s guitar pealing skyward. “There’s a place I want to take you,” Victoria Legrand sings; Beach House’s music, as ever, heading somewhere beyond words, or, on its best pop song, Beyond Love“ – SYDNEY MORNING HERALD ★★★★½
“Songs that have simple, deeply embedded melodies are given room to bend and warp and decay in beautiful anti-Lynchian soundscapes. Not as cinematic and accessible as Bloom, it’s a much stranger, much stronger record” – THE MUSIC ★★★★
“We can’t figure out what makes Beach House so alluring. But Depression Cherry just makes us love them more” – DOUBLE J FEATURE ALBUM
“With every album, someone observes—rightly—that the band has never sounded exactly this full and soaring before. From their muted first two records, into their Sub Pop debut Teen Dream and then Bloom, Beach House always seem to be just leaving the ground as we catch them. It’s a trick of the light, and it speaks to the sadness that makes their music linger” – PITCHFORK 8.4 BEST NEW MUSIC
Beach House is Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally. We have been a band for over a decade living and working in Baltimore, Maryland. Depression Cherry is our fifth full-length record. This record follows the release of our self-titled album in 2006, Devotion in 2008, Teen Dream in 2010, and Bloom in 2012. Depression Cherry was recorded at Studio in the Country in Bogalusa, Louisiana from November ’14 through January ’15. This time period crossed the anniversaries of both John Lennon’s and Roy Orbison’s death.
In general, this record shows a return to simplicity, with songs structured around a melody and a few instruments, with live drums playing a far lesser role. With the growing success of Teen Dream and Bloom, the larger stages and bigger rooms naturally drove us towards a louder, more aggressive place; a place farther from our natural tendencies. Here, we continue to let ourselves evolve while fully ignoring the commercial context in which we exist.
Here are a few quotes that we feel relate to the feeling and themes of this record:
– “I’ll never be able to be here again. As the minutes slide by, I move on. The flow of time is something I cannot stop. I haven’t a choice. I go. One caravan has stopped, another starts up. There are people I have yet to meet, others I’ll never see again. People who are gone before you know it, people who are just passing through. Even as we exchange hellos, they seem to grow transparent. I must keep living with the flowing river before my eyes.” – from ‘Kitchen’ by Banana Yoshimoto
– “We inhabit a world in which the future promises endless possibilities and the past lies irretrievably behind us. The arrow of time… is the medium of creativity in terms of which life can be understood.” – from ‘The Arrow of Time’ by Peter Coveney and Roger Highfield
– “Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things” – from ‘Parerga and Paralipomena’ by Arthur Schopenhauer
– “Hark, now hear the sailors cry, feel the air and see the sky, let your soul and spirit fly, into the mystic…when the fog horn blows, I want to hear it, I don’t have to fear it” – from ‘Into the Mystic’ by Van Morrison
Here is the track listing with selected lyrics.
1. Levitation – “The branches of the trees, they will hang lower now, you will grow too quick, then you will get over it”
2. Sparks – “It’s a gift, taken from the lips, you live again”
3. Space Song – “What makes this fragile world go ‘round, were you ever lost, was she ever found?”
4. Beyond Love – “They take the simple things inside you and put nightmares in your hands”
5. 10:37 – “Here she comes, all parts of everything, stars in the motherhand”
6. PPP – “Did you see it coming, it happened so fast, the timing was perfect, water on glass…”
7. Wildflower – “What’s left you make something of it”
8. Bluebird – “I would not ever try to capture you”
9. Days of Candy – “I know it comes too soon, the universe is riding off with you…… I want to know you there, the universe is riding off with you.”
For us, Depression Cherry is a color, a place, a feeling, an energy… that describes the place you arrive as you move through the endlessly varied trips of existence…
Saturday 30 January: Laneway Singapore @ The Meadow, Gardens By The Bay, Singapore Monday, 1st February: Laneway Auckland @ Silo Park, Auckland Friday, 5th February: Laneway Adelaide @ Harts Mill, Adelaide Saturday, 6th February: Laneway Brisbane @ Brisbane Showgrounds, Bowen Hills Sunday, 7th February: Laneway Sydney @ Sydney College Of The Arts, Rozelle Tuesday, 9th February: SYDNEY: Factory Theatre with special guests. Tickets on sale now from the venue. Thursday, 11th February: MELBOURNE: The Corner with special guests. Tickets on sale now from the venue. Saturday, 13th February: Laneway Melbourne @ Footscray Community Arts Centre, Melbourne Sunday, 14th February: Laneway Fremantle @ Esplanade Reserve and West End, Fremantle
Mistletone, Triple R and FBi proudly present the first ever Australian tour by hazy Brooklyn guitar band DIIV. come to our shores for Laneway Festival plus side shows in Sydney & Melbourne (dates above, plus Laneway Festival on sale now from here), armed with a hotly anticipated new album and a dreamlike alchemy of sound, built from swirling guitars, transportive textures and transcendental pop songs.
DIIV recently shared their heady new single “Dopamine” from Is The Is Are, their highly anticipated sophomore album for esteemed NYC label Captured Tracks. “Dopamine” is an ecstatic expansion on DIIV’s dream pop / shoegaze stylings, and a mouth-watering taster for fans hooked on the headrush that DIIV’s trademark smoky, spiralling pop delivers straight to the adrenal glands.
DIIV is the nom-de-plume of Z. Cole Smith, musical provocateur and front-man of an atmospheric and autumnally-charged Brooklyn four-piece. Signed to the uber-reliable Captured Tracks imprint, DIIV created instant vibrations in the blog-world with their impressionistic debut Sometime; finding its way onto the esteemed pages of Pitchfork and Altered Zones a mere matter of weeks after the group’s formation.
Enlisting the aid of NYC indie-scene-luminary, Devin Ruben Perez, former Smith Westerns drummer Colby Hewitt, and Mr. Smith’s childhood friend Andrew Bailey, DIIV craft a sound that is at once familial and frost-bitten. Indebted to classic kraut, dreamy Creation-records psychedelia, and the primitive-crunch of late-80’s Seattle, the band walk a divisive yet perfectly fused patch of classic-underground influence.
One part THC and two parts MDMA; the first offering from DIIV chemically fuses the reminiscent with the half-remembered building a musical world out of old-air and new breeze. These are songs that remind us of love in all its earthly perfections and perversions.
A lot of DIIV’s magnetism was birthed in the process Mr. Smith went through to discover these initial compositions. After returning from a US tour with Beach Fossils, Cole made a bold creative choice, settling into the window-facing corner of a painter’s studio in Bushwick, sans running water, holing up to craft his music.
In this AC-less wooden room, throughout the thick of the summer, Cole surrounded himself with cassettes and LPs, the likes of Lucinda Williams, Arthur Russell, Faust, Nirvana, and Jandek; writings of N. Scott Momaday, James Welsh, Hart Crane, Marianne Moore, and James Baldwin; and dreams of aliens, affection, spirits, and the distant natural world (as he imagined it from his window facing the Morgan L train).
The resulting music is as cavernous as it is enveloping, asking you to get lost in its tangles in an era that demands your attention be focused into 140 characters.
Poster artwork by Hayden Menzies (METZ); layout by Carl Breitkreuz.
METZ TOUR DATES:
Saturday 30 January: Laneway Singapore @ The Meadow, Gardens By The Bay, Singapore Monday, 1st February: Laneway Auckland @ Silo Park, Auckland Friday, 5th February: Laneway Adelaide @ Harts Mill, Adelaide Saturday, 6th February: Laneway Brisbane @ Brisbane Showgrounds, Bowen Hills Sunday, 7th February: Laneway Sydney @ Sydney College Of The Arts, Rozelle SYDNEY: WED FEB 10 @ Oxford Art Factory. Tickets on sale now from Moshtix.
MELBOURNE: FRI FEB 12 @ The Corner. Tickets on sale Wednesday October 21, 9am from Ticketscout. Saturday, 13th February: Laneway Melbourne @ Footscray Community Arts Centre, Melbourne Sunday, 14th February: Laneway Fremantle @ Esplanade Reserve and West End, Fremantle
Mistletone, Triple R and FBi proudly present Toronto three-piece METZ, the world’s single most brutal band releasing music right now. METZ bring their three-pronged jolt of energy to Sydney & Melbourne for two Laneway sideshows which are guaranteed ecstatic intensity.
Following two acclaimed albums on Sub Pop (2012’s METZ and 2015’s II) and an incredible amount of touring, METZ will release their first new material since the release of II, a 7″ single “Eraser” / “Pure Auto” on esteemed Canadian label Three One G, to coincide with their Australian tour for Laneway Festival in January.
To begin:
“I look at it like this,” METZ frontman Alex Edkins says. “You start a band, just as something to do, because music’s what makes you tick, the thing you dream about and think about and that’s it. You never think that you’ll be able to do it all the time. But then, for some inexplicable reason, people actually listen and latch on and the band begins to take on new meaning. All of a sudden there are expectations and pressure, real or imagined, to change who you are. It was important to us, when making this record, not to give in to that pressure.”
What happens when a seemingly irresistible force meets an immovable object is a serviceable metaphor for the music METZ creates, both live and on record. Now behold II, the concussive new full-length from what is arguably North America’s finest touring rock band. Written and recorded in 2014, after two years of constant touring behind their rightly adored self-titled debut, II is METZ at their most true to form—as pure an expression of what they doas can currently be committed to tape. The guitars are titanic, the drums ill-tempered, the vocals chilling, and the volume worrisome. Though they incorporated new instruments, (baritone guitar, tape loops, piano, synth, found sounds) and stretched out the arrangements, they still managed to “stay true to what made us tick in the first place: that immediacy,” Edkins calls it. “If it punches you in the gut.”
And does it ever. From the exhilarating grind of “Spit You Out” to the blunt-force thrills of “Landfill,” herein reside 10 songs as uncompromising in their ferocity and abrasiveness as any collection this record label has had the pleasure of releasing to date. To accomplish such a sound, the band forced itself to stay home and write for the better part of six months. Tracking was done in three different studios, in Toronto and elsewhere in Ontario, including the same barn where much of METZ had been painstakingly assembled. While said predecessor was often “clean and clinical,” II is what Edkins describes as a “much heavier, darker, and sloppier” affair, with many of its roughest edges and ugliest tones kept intact. Its lyrical matter, Edkins notes, stems from a year of loss and doubt, of contemplating our relationships with death and the planet. “I consider myself a pretty massive pessimist, but a pessimist who knows how lucky he is,” he says. “A lot of things in everyday life drive me crazy: how we relate to each other; how politics, media, technology, money and medication influence our lives. This band, in a lot of ways, is an outlet.”
What we’re left with is the sound of an already monstrous band improving in both subtle and terrifying ways.“We take our noise and our feedback very seriously,” Edkins says. “The more we do this, the more we realize there’s no such thing as right or wrong in music. It comes down to feel. And if it feels good, it works. This time we sorta said, ‘This is who we are. We are not going to clean up our sound, we are not going to hire a big producer, we are not going to try to write a radio song. We are going to be honest and leave the warts for all to see. We are really happy with how it turned out.”
BERRY, NSW:Saturday December 5 @ Fairgrounds Festival. More info and tickets here.
SYDNEY: Monday December 7 @ Oxford Art Factory w/- special guest DJ James Dela Cruz of The Avalanches. Presented by 2ser. Tickets on sale now from Moshtix.
MELBOURNE: Tuesday December 8 @ Max Watts w/- special guests The Avalanches DJs. Presented by Triple R. Tickets on sale now from Max Watts.
BRISBANE: Friday December 11 @ The Zoo w/- special guests Primitive Motion and Faint Spells (NZ). Presented by 4zzz. Tickets on sale now from The Zoo & Oztix.
DISCONNECT FESTIVAL, WA: December 11-13 @ Fairbridge Village. More info and tickets here.
Mistletone is blissed to announce the return of the legendary Mercury Rev, playing their first headline shows in Australia since 2002. Mercury Rev’s new album The Light In You will be released on October 2 on Bella Union via PIAS.
As Mercury Rev began recording their eighth studio album in autumn 2013, when asked what people could expect, co-pilot Grasshopper responded, “Steel Resonator Mandolin. Timpani. Sleigh Bells. All sorts of electric guitars…..” He subsequently added, “It is the best stuff we have done in a long, long time. Gonna be big sounding!”
Two years on, The Light In You more than lives up to its billing. The record is filled with wondrous and voluminous kaleidoscopic detail, but also intimate moments of calm, and altogether stands up to the very best that this notable band of maverick explorers has ever created. Its ecstatic highs and shivery comedowns also reflect a particularly turbulent era in the lives of Grasshopper and fellow co-founder Jonathan Donahue, of calamities both personal and physical, but also rebirths and real births (Grasshopper became a father for the first time in 2014). There’s a reason for the seven-year gap since the band’s last album, Snowflake Midnight.
“It was one of those otherworldly life sequences, when everything you think is solid turns molten,” explains Jonathan. “But also, when something is worth saying, it can take a long time to say it, rather than just blurt it out.”
As well as The Light In You being the first Mercury Rev album with Bella Union, it’s also the first with only Jonathan and Grasshopper at the controls, as scheduling conflicts and travel between the Catskills and Dave Fridmann’s Tarbox studio became too great to overcome. On The Light In You, Jonathan and Grasshopper decided they were best served being based at home in the Catskills for once. Surrounded by longtime friends such as engineer Scott Petito and bassist Anthony Molina, Jonathan and Grasshopper quickly found their stride recording themselves in their own basement studio as well as venturing out into the daylight to record tracks at some of their old haunts like NRS and White Light Studios. The two even found time to arrange backing vocal harmonies and record with Ken Stringfellow at his studio Son du Blé studios in Paris.
Yet from its title down, the album clearly reflects the core relationship between Jonathan and Grasshopper, best friends since they were teenagers, who accompanied each other through the musical changes, band fractures and exulted breakthroughs that has marked Mercury Rev’s career since they emerged with the extraordinary Yerself Is Steam in 1991.
“You can go as deep as you want with the title, on a metaphorical, spiritual level, or just poetic license,” Jonathan suggests. “It’s the beacon that shines and allows us to see ourselves – and then there’s the music between Grasshopper and I, which is how we reflect each other. The arc of the album, lyrically, is someone who’s gone through an incredible period of turbulence, sadness and uncertainty, and as the album progresses, a light appears on the water.”
Photo by Alise Marie
The album’s track-listing follows a similar trajectory, from the opening slow-build cascade of ‘The Queen Of Swans’, through the epic lonely beauty of ‘Central Park East’ and the album’s half-way peak between ‘Emotional Freefall’ and ‘Are You Ready’ before the closing sequence, with the exhilarating pop beacons of ‘Sunflower’ and ‘Rainy Day Record’ sandwiching the more tranquil ‘Moth Light’. The light is reflected both by the album’s brilliantine colours and imagery drawn largely from the elements and the seasons, creating a world as only Mercury Rev know how. “It’s like taking a drug, but not actually taking a drug,” Grasshopper reckons. “Just sit back and enter and immerse yourself.”
Since Snowflake Midnight, Jonathan and Grasshopper have stayed productive, for example with their improvised collective, Mercury Rev’s Cinematic Sound Tettix BrainWave Concerto Experiment at John Zorn’s club in NYC, creating live soundtracks to favourite films at various junctures across Europe (most recently in London as part of Swans’ Mouth To Mouth festival in 2014). There were also occasional festival shows such as headlining 2014’s Green Man festival to celebrate the deluxe version of 1998 opus Deserter’s Songs.
“Playing tracks again from Deserter’s Songs helped us look at where we’ve been, and where we were going,” says Grasshopper. “Though by no means did we want to make Deserter’s Songs Two, we did feel we had some loose ends to tie up.”
As Grasshopper once commented about Deserter’s Songs, “It’s special because that was the one that brought us back from the brink.” The Light In You is special for that very same reason.
Mistletone proudly presents Julia Holter joining the 25th Silver Jubilee lineup of Meredith Music Festival, hot on the heels of her colossal new album Have You In My Wilderness (out now on Domino), plus a slew of intimate headline shows.
JULIA HOLTER TOUR DATES:
WED DEC 9 – SYDNEY: Newtown Social Club w/- special guest Marcus Whale. Presented by 2ser. Tickets on sale now from Ticketscout.
THU DEC 10 – BRISBANE: Black Bear Lodge w/- special guest Andrew Tuttle. Presented by 4zzz. Tickets on sale now from Oztix.
FRI DEC 11 – MELBOURNE: Howler w/- special guests Sui Zhen + Wintercoats. Presented by Triple R. Tickets on sale now from Howler.
SAT DEC 12 – MEREDITH MUSIC FESTIVAL, VIC. Meredith subscriber ticket ballot open now.
SUN DEC 13 – DISCONNECT FESTIVAL, WA. More info and tickets here.
Have You In My Wilderness is the fourth full length album by Los Angeles artist Julia Holter and her most intimate album yet. Recorded in her hometown over the last year and once again crafted with Grammy-winning producer and engineer Cole Greif-Neill, the album follows 2013’s Loud City Song and two much-lauded previous titles – Ekstasis (2012) and Tragedy (2011).
Have You in My Wilderness was written from the heart – warm, dark and raw – and explores love, trust, and power in human relationships. While love songs are familiar in pop music, Julia Holter manages to stay fascinatingly oblique and enigmatic, with some of the most sublime and transcendent music she has ever written. Like Julia’s previous albums, Have You in My Wilderness is multi-layered and texturally rich, featuring an array of electronic and acoustic instruments played by an ensemble of gifted Los Angeles musicians. It is also her most sonically intimate album, with her vocals front and centre in the mix, lifted out of the layers of smeared, hazy effects. The result is striking: clear and vivid, but disarmingly personal.
Julia Holter is pretty phenomenal. Frankly, she’s my current musical hero. She’s an L.A. born and based composer, and one of the most adventurous, experimental, ambitious artists working today. Her music is almost without roots. How she gets it from her head to our ears without it catching on accepted conventions along the way is a minor miracle, but by the time it arrives — it sounds like pure imagination. How does she make this stuff?
Holter began studying composition, fusing elements of twentieth-century classical, jazz and baroque pop and her music has evolved to combine avant garde and pop ideas, with the human voice as arguably her primary instrument. It has a late night, cinematic quality, and can be both cat-hair soft and strident. She leads a hypnotic, spiritual, guitar-less band comprised of cello, piano, sax, violin and drums, with layered vocals, and finds a heavenly and sincere new way of expressing the inexpressible.
Mistletone proudly presents Jessica Pratt joining the 25th Silver Jubilee lineup of Meredith Music Festival. This time around, Jessica will be touring Australia as a duo with guitarist Cyrus Gengras, for intimate headline shows in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne plus festival performances at the newly-announced Fairgrounds Festival in Berry, New South Wales and the already-announced Meredith Music Festival in Victoria.
JESSICA PRATT TOUR DATES:
SAT DEC 5 – BERRY, NSW: FAIRGROUNDS FESTIVAL. Tickets on sale now at www.fairgrounds.com.au
TUE DEC 8 – SYDNEY: Newtown Social Club w/- special guests Jep and Dep. Presented by 2ser. Tickets on sale now from Ticketscout.
WED DEC 9 – BRISBANE: Black Bear Lodge w/- special guest McKisko. Presented by 4zzz. Tickets on sale now from Oztix.
THU DEC 10 – MELBOURNE: Northcote Social Club w/- special guests Laura Jean + Leah Senior. Presented by Triple R. Tickets on sale now from Ticketscout.
SAT DEC 12 – MEREDITH MUSIC FESTIVAL, VIC. Meredith subscriber ticket ballot open now.
SUN DEC 13 – DISCONNECT FESTIVAL, WA. More info and tickets here.
We want scribes and songbirds to tell us so—and sometimes they do and then it is. They point their pens and focus their lens where they will and surprise us to our soul. Jessica Pratt’s On Your Own Love Again (Drag City / Spunk) is a record that does it to us, with songs from a spine-thrilling new place and a gifted young singer with her own musical logic.
Jessica Pratt’s self-titled debut (Mistletone Records, 2012 — mail order here) has been much-murmured about in the time between yesterday and today. People respond to the austere, pristine clarity of the performances, the gentle strength, marveling at how much comes from so little: just a voice and a guitar or two! They remark on the timeless nature of the songs and the voice, scrupulously informed by the folk-rock of ages past, but sung without bags (none in hand, nor beneath eyes). They speculate on just who is the personality behind this Jessica Pratt? It is hard not to respond to the sound of her music, not to want more right away.
Two years on, Jessica’s On Your Own Love Again plays her further adventures in different pastures. If they feel removed from the first songs, it may help to know that the recordings of the first album were made some years back with no expectation of making an album. They sat quiet on the shelf for a long time, appearing on the internet eventually. It all seemed harmless, but when Birth Records honcho Tim Presley rolled up in his long white limousine
and began to spin tales of folk rock glory, who was she to say no? Sure, Mr. Presley, fence me a record!
The nice part about learning that people dig your sound is that it gives you the chance to think of what else you’d do. After deep consideration, Jessica found new songs within her and an urgency to make another record, marked with a strong sense for rendering it exactly the way she heard it in her head, spending time with her tunes and crafting the smallest details. In this way, she truly was able to inhabit her own skin as a singer of her songs.
Jessica Pratt’s songs ripple beneath the surface with lyrical details that morph almost subliminally from the personal into fantasy. When Jessica’s playful nature bubbles up, she sends her voice traveling into strange places to see what it finds there. The music too is deceptively accomplished, providing subtle hallucinatory nuances to the tunes. The orchestral organ stop working in the shadows of “Wrong Hand,” the reverberant percussion floating through “Game That I Play,” the clavinet panned out on the side in “Moon Dude,” Jessica’s sudden vocal dip into her lower register on “Greycedes”— all pull at the ears, highlighting her unique pop sensibilities with craft and humor, giving the album’s inherent romance a greater heft.
Perhaps most significantly, On Your Own Love Again was recorded at home — at places in Los Angeles and San Francisco. This process sands the surface of her more active multi-tracking approach, allowing a sound as delicate and singular as her former recordings. On Your Own Love Again Jessica is fully alive in a space all her own; with isolation in the breeze, the sound resonant in the natural light and a gauze of clouds in the sky, under which she can relax, unwind and let herself be.
Mistletone proudly presents The Field, aka Swedish electronic music producer and DJ Axel Willner, returning to Australia to play a late-night, all-hardware live set for Melbourne Festival, plus solo shows in Sydney and (for the first time ever) Perth. Joining The Field’s Sydney and Perth shows will be influential Berlin instigator Barker (Ostgut Ton / Leisure System), who will play a DJ set at both shows. Tour dates below.
THE FIELD TOUR DATES:
SYDNEY: THURSDAY, OCTOBER 22 @ Goodgod w/- Barker (Ostgut Ton / Leisure System – Berlin) + Noise In My Head (DJ sets). Early bird tickets on sale now from Moshtix. Presented by 2ser.
MELBOURNE: FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23 @ Melbourne Festival Hub, doors open 11pm. Tickets + more information here.
PERTH: SATURDAY, OCTOBER 24 @ Jimmy’s Den w/- Barker (Ostgut Ton / Leisure System – Berlin) (DJ set) + Basic Mind. Co-presented by Camp Doogs. Tickets on sale now from Ticketbooth.
The sublime, minimal soundscapes of Stockholm-born, Berlin-based Axel Willner—aka The Field—have been wowing listeners ever since 2007, when the release of his debut album From Here We Go Sublime saw him hailed as a new prophet in the techno scene. A dreamy blend of beats, atmospheric electronic and snatches of 60s pop, Willner melds his complex layering of sound to blissful perfection. Known for his playful, pop-inflected tunes, The Field’s solo show is a journey through the raw electronic side of his sound, encompassing work from From Here We Go Sublime and latest Cupid’s Head, performed live on the original hardware. Whether soaring in euphoria or throbbing with dense driving beats, the polished mastery of this singular talent is indisputable.
Sydney & Perth support Barker might not be world-renowned, but his influence runs deep through the veins of Europe’s electronic music community. Barker started out promoting his own events under the name “Instrumentality”, an event that encouraged improvisation, collaboration, and electronic experiments every week for four years. During this time he built up a sizeable collection of analogue hardware that became the backbone for his work as Voltek. He’s probably best known as half of the Barker & Baumecker duo, and as the driving force behind the Leisure System residency at Berlin’s most influential club, Berghain.
The Field and Barker will be joined by local dance luminaries Noise In My Head in Sydney, and Basic Mind in Perth.
“One of modern electronic music’s most satisfying auteurs” – PITCHFORK
The Field sprung into existence in 2003 when Axel took to Buzz – a software program he still uses to make music today – to construct his ambient techno based on a stoic motorik and a perpetually rotating hook. He was picked up by Kompakt just a year later. The connection between The Field and Kompakt transcends all the more obvious signposts. For Kompakt, their reputation as purveyors of laudable minimal techno and microhouse had already been cemented in 2005, seven years into the Cologne-based label’s existence – not least owing to the releases created by their founders, techno producers Michael Mayer and Jurgen Paape and, of course, Wolfgang Voigt. Finding The Field was different though; Axel certainly matched the label’s mould, rekindling something of Voigt’s late 90s project Gas by marrying heavily reverberating 4/4 techno rhythms – the sort that evoke the lost thud of a distant club – with the vast expanse and translucent territories of ambient music. Yet listening even as far back as ‘Things Keep Falling Down’ – The Field’s debut EP on Kompakt – it was clear there was something more, a veiled restlessness bubbling under the loops and layers, as though Axel had set himself boundaries but then tired and sought to break them; it’s this subtle tension in all his albums that heightens them from their otherwise dreamlike state.
But first, let’s go back to the beginning, to Stockholm in Sweden where Axel Willner grew up; for to understand The Field you need to understand that everything he’s experienced from an early age and up through to the present has influenced him in his music and will continue to do so. Those same childhood and teen memories that he imprinted on his very early demos – attempted on desktop computers when the internet was but a microcosm of what it is today – through early incarnation Speed Wax has informed everything he’s done since.
His beginnings saw an early love of pop, like a generation of Swedes his first musical memory was “probably Abba.” That’s stayed in his repertoire, from the samples on LP From Here We Go To Sublime’s ‘A Paw In My Face’ to a glossy cover of 1980 hit ‘Everybody’s Got To Learn Sometime’ on Yesterday & Today. Other formative experiences in music were more conflicting though. On the one hand Axel professes a teenage love of punk, citing The Misfits in particular, on the other though – as he reached late adolescence – he found himself under the strict restrictions and discipline of a music school. Perhaps unsurprisingly it wasn’t for him. “I was in this school that had people nationwide who’d applied because of the quality of their music courses, so I had all these top of the line musicians round me – but I found it dull!” Laughs Axel. “But,” he rations, “it all felt really forced, there were all these students and it seemed like they were all in a niche so it was hard to break out of it.”
Thankfully Stockholm as a city provided far more musical nutrition and fuelled Axel’s move towards electronic music. It coincided with the beginnings of a small club scene in the Swedish capital that started building up during the late 90s; “they were fun days,” he recalls, “I was in a duo called Speed Wax and the places we played were all really into Techno and Warp Records; it was cool, people helped each other out, the vibes were good; it started out just doing nights to 20 people and then it just grew and grew.”
The Field as an entity sprung up around 2003, the back catalogue of Gas at this point having a strong influence on Axel, and he took to Buzz – a software program he still uses to make music today – to construct his first forays into ambient techno, a move away from the guitar-based drone that encapsulated Speed Wax.
He was picked up by Kompakt just a year later in 2004, a demo that stood out amongst pile, though at the time he wasn’t “really aware of any buzz.” Yet in his first release for them – the aforementioned ‘Things Keep Falling Down’ in February 2005 – there already lurked potential within its two tracks. Both ‘Love vs. Distance’ and ‘Thoughts vs. Action’ soared beyond the 10 minute mark; the latter a crackling jump-and-stop minimal effort, to listen to it now is to listen to The Field stripped away of the scale he has since brought to his work. It was ‘Love vs. Distance’ that provided the template for what would follow; based on a stoic motorik and a perpetually rotating hook, it provided an early demonstration of how the Swede could take just four bars of sound and deftly deconstruct, alter and rebuild them to create a constantly changing canvas.
That, alongside follow up 2006 EP ‘Sun & Ice,’ made it clear that his match with the label made perfect sense. Kompakt’s other releases around this time included ambient house legends The Orb’s first release on the imprint, as well as the mellowed out soft-focus bliss of German producer Superpitcher’s ‘Today’ mix featuring other Kompakt members DJ Koze and Triola among others. In ‘Sun & Ice’ The Field imbued a sense of wandering expanse, yet where his contemporaries were happy to submerge themselves in ambient fog, he cut through with more pronounced percussion and purpose, tracks like ‘Over The Ice’ skipping along like skimmed stones over water.
It all came together in 2007 on the phenomenal success of debut LP From Here We Go Sublime; its accolades are numerous – a 9.0 and a place inside the Top 200 records of the decade by Pitchfork, highly regarded by the NME and the BBC and receiving the best aggregate score on review compiler Metacritic to name a few – it came out at a time when electronic meant brash, obvious, loud. Electro was its most swollen. Drum n’ bass was well in the throes of eating itself. In comparison The Field came across like fading noises of the night, the beats still driving but the sun coming up, that transition between the club and journey home and down.
It was never more evident than on ‘Good Things End,’ which at one thundered and also fawned, industrial rhythms overlapped with lost sounding vocal samples and blurring, faded-pale drones. For Axel the success of the album surprised him, “I was flattered! I didn’t think there’d be much interest; it’s a record that’s still important to me though. I’d had a lot of the tracks for it a while, there’s a lot of old memories on the album, a lot of good times connected to it.”
2009’s follow up Yesterday & Today embodied Axel’s belief in the communal nature of music that’s always imbued itself within The Field; there’s always a human heart beating among the electronics and samples. On Yesterday & Today that became more explicit as live instruments were worked in with Willner’s laptop experiments – never more so than with the cameo of John Stanier, drummer of respected American math-rockers Battles, on the title track. Linking back to a distant past again, pop was revisited with a cover of The Korgis ‘Everybody’s Got To Learn Sometime,’ and overall the album felt more pointed, with rhythms and synths gaining harder edges.
It was around this time Axel also switched countries, a romantic interest resulting in him leaving Stockholm as a home for the first time since childhood, and moving to Berlin. One of the most famous clubbing cities in the world, for the artist its hedonism is something he shuns when not playing – “it’s like going to your office,” he says simply, adding credence to the notion that The Field’s work is music meant for a myriad of situations – not just late night basements and warehouses – but for fading afternoons, early morning sunrises a feeling of expanse that’s always existed.
In 2011 third album Looping State Of Mind, recalled his previous work but also pushes on in new directions. “It’s been evolving and it will keep on doing so,” says its creator, “people come and go, adding their things to it, you change as well and so will the sound.” As ever The Field transcend their mere components, Looping State Of Mind could almost be a manifesto for them. Certainly for Axel there is no beginning and end to the impact of what he sees and experiences in every day life, things will always come back around; the challenge for him is to adapt and alter them when they do in order to create something that understands and re-defines them in a new way each time.
2013 saw the release of Cupid’s Head, hailed by Resident Advisor as “one of Willner’s most affirming and beatific creations to date”.
Born June 7th 1983 in Bedford to guitar teacher mother and builder father.
Grew up nearby on the outskirts of an industrial town called Milton Keynes, best known for having concrete cows, also known to truckers as ‘the Devil’s Lay by’. known by ravers for The Sanctury (Helter Skelter, Dreamscape) and various free parties (J13, Dissident, Survival, STS Harcore etc).
Learnt to play a lot of instruments in childhood, and played in various bands before discovering computers and rave music in the late 90’s. Made my first electronic tracks age 13, and built up a sizable collection of vintage analogue synths after leaving school. By 18 I’d started performing live sets at raves in the area.
Went to study Music in Brighton in 2002 and became part of the experimental electronic scene there, spearheaded by Wrong Music, and running my own weekly live electronic night called Instrumentality (www.instrumentality.info) which brought over 200 artists to Brighton in 4 years. Everything from a 26 piece marching band from Seattle (Infernal Noise Brigade) to the first UK Flying Lotus show. It was an exciting time for music, felt like a lot of musical boundaries were being pushed.
Started working for Ned Beckett on his Overkill parties and Littlebig agency towards the end of my studies, before moving with to Berlin in 2007. A year later, we started a quarterly residency at Berghain called Leisure System, bringing a more genre-defiant programme to the techno superclub at their request. At the end of last year the brand expanded to become a label, and we’re having our 4th Birthday this September.
In 2008 I started collaborating with another Berghain resident nd_baumecker, which became the project Barker & Baumecker. After our first EP ‘Candyflip’ was released on Ostgut Ton in 2010, we toured our live show extensively throughout Europe’s techno scenes and are currently getting ready for our 2nd EP on March 26th, leading to an album in August.
A constant throughout all this is a passion for improvisation and collaborating – I’ve worked with the likes of Tim Exile, Clark, Jimmy Edgar, Shitmat, Scotch Egg, The Field, Leafcutter John, under various projects like Rushing Forth Like a Fiery Law, The Trips or Knight Terrors.
