Mistletone

Our good pals at Human Ear Music announce that the long-lost Scared Famous by Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti is now being released on CD. These tracks come from Pink’s massive bank of half-forgotten cassettes and were all recorded at a key moment in Ariel’s recording adventure, dating back to, or immediately following the recordings on House Arrest. Order your copy here

Vinyl International has also unearthed Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti #1: Underground – the mysterious, unheard first album in the legendary Haunted Graffiti series and full of memorable songs that will be sure to please any Ariel Pink fan – for a limited-run vinyl release. All their pink vinyl has sold out but they have some purple ones left so be quick!

Ariel Pink has also contributed a smokin’ hot cover of Madonna’s “Everybody,” a duet with Julia Shammas Holter, for Manimal Vinyl‘s amazing “Through the Wilderness” Madonna tribute compilation. When asked why he’s doing it, Pink replied “Because it’s Madonna, man!” Buy it now – sales will benefit Madonna’s Raising Malawi charity which is funding the construction of a groundbreaking school and care center for the 1 Million HIV/AIDS orphans in Malawi.

Track Listing: Jonathan Wilson “La Isla Bonita” Golden Animals “Beautiful Stranger (Blues)” Winter Flowers “Live To Tell” Mountain Party “Material Girl” Jeremy Jay “Into The Groove” Ariel Pink “Everybody” Giant Drag “Oh Father” The Tyde “Hung Up” Alexandra Hope “Lucky Star” The Chapin Sisters “Borderline” Apollo Heights “Dress You Up” The Bubonic Plague “Who’s That Girl?” The Prayers “Cherish” Lion of Panjshir “Crazy for You” Lavender Diamond “Like A Prayer”

Mark Gomes reports on Scared Famous for Three Thousand:

Ariel Pink’s music is beautiful in that ultimate, metonymic way of having no substitute; its feeling simply cannot be expressed in any other way. Obsessively recorded second-by-second with his toe poised over an 8-track tape recorder, Pink’s songs are meticulous scrapbook tours as vivid as a glass-bottomed boat view of the Great Barrier Reef. There’s a weird and joyous certainty about them like turning over memories – of piecing things together to make sense of your own story and self-image. Listeners unfamiliar with Pink’s total, vampiric seductiveness are in an enviable position; the joy of meeting this Los Angeles sensation for the first-time is unforgettable.
Scared Famous reissues tracks from the third and fourth volumes of the Haunted Graffiti series; five albums originally self-released by Pink during the early 2000s. The now infamous and much discussed ‘no-production’ sound of House Arrest, Worn Copy and The Doldrums works its ineffable and melancholy power here again. Five-star melodicism and insane arrangements are always par with Pink, but the 2-step jive of ‘The Kitchen Club’, Barrett-esque ‘Beefbud’ and obliterating longing of ‘The List (My Favourite Song)’ are standout masterpieces of transcendent DIY pop.

Nathan Gray
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Designed by the stunning Dana

The Black Dice “Ball/ Peace in the Valley” 7″ book has finally been repressed and is available on limited blue/yellow opaque swirl vinyl from on San Diego’s Three.One.G. label.

Order your copy here

The first run of Beach House vinyl sold out impossibly fast but there has been a re-press and you can order your beautiful 12″ vinyl copy here

Load Blown, the sublime new record by Brooklyn’s Black Dice, is their debut on the Animal Collective-owned label Paw Tracks, released locally on Mistletone.

Here is a splendid Three Thousand review by Mark Gomes:

Black Dice are completely sublimated, Shinto-like, in the teeming hive of sounds on new album, Load Blown. The New York trio’s ‘ecological’ concerns (their words) have never been answered better than this – each track is a close-up look at the surface of some new, virulent and electronic ant-hill. There’s something paganistic about their artificial powers of regeneration; it’s a freaked-out, amoral and thrilling feeling of the music being somehow half-animal / half-machine. Black Dice are like those islanders in The Wickerman who perversely worship nature, but instead are given over to the embodying powers of electronic music.

Fans will expect as much, not only as a one-up from 2002’s watershed post-noise album Creature Comforts, but also because Load Blown takes in tracks from the recent Roll Up / Drool and Manoman 12″ EPs. The open-ended format and communicative bubbling and gurgling of the former is like the album overall – sheets of trebly static roll across sampled drunk guitar, synthetic balloon rubbing and, four minutes into the track, the huge revving sounds of a broken, sit-in arcade driving game. Kids nowadays would do better dropping acid to this, than to Microcosmos or Koyaanisqatsi.

Another new Plagne release has surfaced on the Breakdance the Dawn label. Subdivide & Never Stop is a cassette only release which is split thus:

side a: a new 20 min ‘concrete’ work
side b: a 20 min live set

This sucker may be purchased at the Half Theory shop

Happy bithday to us! Mistletone turned the big 01 this month! Huzzah!!

Just released on Mistletone is Isolation Loops, the debut album from New Zealand artist Bachelorette (alter ego of Annabel Alpers). Recorded in the wilds of Canterbury NZ over a couple of months in a hut built by her great grandfather, Isolation Loops was recorded and mixed entirely by Alpers. The results is a wondrous home-made excursion into cosmic folk and catchy-as-anything psych pop. To celebrate the release Bachelorette will be making the trek to Australia in November for a national tour. Here are the dates:

Melbourne Thursday November 1 @ East Brunswick Club

Adelaide Friday November 2 @ Urtext

Sydney Saturday November 3 @ Ruby Rabbit

BLACK DICE! BLACK DICE!! BLACK DICE!!!

We’re crazily excited about the October release of Brooklyn experimentalists Black Dice‘s fourth album Load Blown. This record will blow your mind! Recorded over an 18 month period, Load Blown is a sprawling mix bag of imagination.The beats drip and roll, tar-pit voices sing into an oil can, and the guitars crank like calliope. Some tunes crackle and burble like submerged television, others bump and click along like a Summer Jam concert series from another dimension. Definitely Load Blown is a trip worth taking! If all goes to plan the band will head our way in the first part of 2008.

To celebrate our favourite time of year Mistletone will be releasing a xmas compilation featuring some very special artists’ takes on the “holiday song” tradition. Artists include Mystic Chords Of Memory, Evangelicals, High Places, John Maus, Pikelet, Barrage, Francis Plagne, Ned Collette, Jack Ladder, Hands On Heads, The Sticks, Ross McLennan and more. All profits from the album will go to an animal welfare charity because our furry little friends often get a raw deal at that time of the year. We’ll be launching the record in Melbourne with a Mistletone Xmas party at the Tote on Sunday December 23. Circle your diaries and stuff your stockings!

Mistletone’s funnest friend Dan Deacon has been busily conquering all in his path since his TOTALLY AWESOME album Spiderman Of The Rings dropped in June. After temporarily becoming estranged from his touring buddy, the trippy green skull, Dan has resumed his month long sold-out US tour with Girl Talk. Dan will be bringing his crazy, crazy party to Australia over the summer with a wild series of party-hearty shows in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane so get ready for Dan Deacon mania!

Speaking of tours, Mistletone is bringing San Francisco psych pop maestro and all round good guy Kelley Stoltz back to Australia for a full national tour in February 2008! For the shows Kelley will re reuniting with his gun Aussie band (Mikey Young, Mark Nelson, Kjirsten Robb and Julian Wu). Also look out for a new Kelley Stoltz album out early next year on Sub Pop records.

If you still haven’t heard the new self titled album from Melbourne pop/experimental wiz Francis Plagne you really should stop what you’re doing and hunt it down now! Since the albums release last month, the record has been receiving praise a plenty. This review from writer extraordinaire Mark Gomes sums it up excellently:

“Wunderkind teen experimentalist, Francis Plagne, dons stripes of genius on his second album split-published by Mistletone and venerated ex-pat, Synaesthesia Records. A pleasurably schizoid, patient mix of abstract sound assemblage and skewed melodic hooks, Francis Plagne neatly stiches-up 70 years of winning pop and conceptual music discoveries in just 70 minutes. Dialling through the Out-sounds spectrum as if taking a leisurely Sunday walk, Plagne’s ability to skip across and combine field recordings, extended instrumental technique, electronics and harmonic song is staggering, but never pretentious – making for one of the year’s most intriguing and go-ahead local releases.”

Melbourne peeps can check out Francis live this Saturday night at The Afterdark and next Thursday September 27 at Bar Open.

The first quarter of next year will see new albums from Kes, Ross McLennan, Beach House, Evangelicals and Dan Deacon and a couple of very tasty international tours. Stay tuned!!

Adios, Ash & Sophie

Hurrah! The Mistletone Website has been launched onto the World Wide Web! Our site will feature information on all our artists, plus also Tour information, downloads, online store and heaps more. If you have any suggestions or comments please feel free to let us know from our Comments page. We hope you enjoy the site! Sophie & Ash