Posted: October 23rd, 2008 | Author: Nghia | Filed under: FRICTION, events, live, music, nyc | Tags: best fwends, cake shop, cmj, crystal antlers, free, friction nyc, fuck yeah fest, ninjasonik | No Comments »
FRICTION NYC and FUCK YEAH FEST bring a little bit of the right coast, left coast, and in between to the Cake Shop for this CMJ Afterparty TONIGHT! Austin, Texas’ BEST FWENDS, along with Long Beach, California’s CRYSTAL ANTLERS, and Brooklyn’s very own NINJASONIK get hype for CMJ. Best Fwends gets shit moving at 1AM. No RSVP bullshit — just show up and GET HYPE! Free PBR while it lasts!
I didn’t even write any of this people, I put in something else earlier. Justin changed my shit up, another case of not being able to delegate and being controllingly anal. -Nghia
“BEST FWENDS’ music is a big attention-deficit-disordered smash-up of punk, early Beastie Boys and unrefined 8-bit sounds. It’s a kindred sound to those of British bands like Gay Against You and Applicants: frantic, but rooted in pop and/or rock. It’s trashy, cheap, headachy noise, but noise that a lot of love has clearly been put into.”
[MP3]: “Orange Marker”
“Existing at the cross-section of so many styles, CRYSTAL ANTLERS debut EP (Touch & Go) finds the band at a more important nexus of potential and realization. In person, Crystal Antlers look like outcasts from six different bands, and at various points on this record, they sound like it, too: Merging psych, garage, lo-fi, prog, and countless other influences, the group easily maintains consistency despite a complete inability to be pinned to any specific movement or trend.” [Pitchfork, Best New Music]
[MP3]: “A Thousand Eyes”
“Looking for a good time? You might want to call NINJASONIK. These Brooklyn art-hop pranksters combine spiky beats with rhymes about grabbing asses and the skinny jeans they wear…Mostly, though, people have been talking about these foul mouthed Ninjas for their debauchery fueled live shows, which has seen plenty of crowd diving and drunken punk rock antics…Whoa! Don’t say we didn’t warn you.” [Brooklyn Radio]
[MP3]: “Tight Pants”
Posted: October 23rd, 2008 | Author: justin | Filed under: FRICTION, events, music, nyc, photography | No Comments »
More pictures from Sunday night’s FRICTION show with The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Women, The Beets, and Katie Stelmanis on Flickr. All images © 2008 Nghia Nguyen
Posted: October 20th, 2008 | Author: justin | Filed under: FRICTION, events, music, nyc, photography | Tags: dj porkchop, friction nyc, japanther, killer dreamer, mercury lounge, ninjasonik, patrick parault, ss pyramid snake | No Comments »
More pictures from Friday night’s festive FRICTION show with Japanther, Ninjasonik, Killer Dreamer, and S.S. Pyramid Snake on Flickr. All images © 2008 Patrick Parault
Posted: October 8th, 2008 | Author: justin | Filed under: FRICTION, events, live, music, nyc | Tags: cake shop, friction nyc, katie stelmanis, the beets, the pains of being pure at heart, women | No Comments »
GET HYPE! With our second show of the weekend, on the eve(-ish) of CMJ, FRICTION invades Cake Shop with a lineup designed to make you stay put. Save those feet from all of the pavement pounding they’re about to do a few days later and get a jump on some of the most anticipated bands featured during this year’s CMJ clusterfuck festival. New York City’s blissful noise-pop darlings, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, along with recent Jagjaguwar signees Women (Alberta, CA), and fine purveyors of 60s garage straight-outta Queens, The Beets are featured on this bill. Toronto’s Katie Stelmanis and her aresenal of piano and MIDI noise percolations and classically trained vocals to boot, opens the show.
Tickets are just $8 and available the night of the show at Cake Shop. Doors @ 7:30pm
THE PAINS OF BEING PURE AT HEART “mix sugary boy/girl vocals, Jesus & Mary Chain’s rain clouds and Darklands drum machine minus the face-melting noise, sneaker-gazing a la Black Tambourine (or, hey hey, rifle through the rest of the Slumberland back catalog to namedrop something with a bit more jangle) and punky Comet Gain(s) into addictive pop gold that locates a place beyond the band’s well-chosen influences.” [Stereogum]
[MP3]: “Come Saturday”
WOMEN “straddle the 1960s divide between the Warhol crowd’s speed-addled New York cynicism and the echoes of psychedelic San Francisco that bubbled up across the pond in the fey, catchy pop of UK groups like the Zombies.” [Pitchfork]
[MP3]: “Black Rice”
“I’d stay for just one song, but once they began playing their classic 60s garage rock I was gripped. Twin guitars beamed rhythmically forward, punctuated by strokes of brush snare and flicking around vocals that seemed perfectly, timelessly at ease in the music. This is a band that seemed to have appeared out of the ground (of Queens, apparently) fully formed without a formative period. Predictions are dangerous so I’ll try to sidestep making one now, but wherever
THE BEETS may go from here, I have a feeling it’ll be worth watching.” [Impose]
[MP3]: “Happy But On My Way”
“The drama of Kate Bush and Toyah Wilcox mixed with the
sturm and drang of Diamanda Galas and the pop bubbles of Lena Lovich or Ann Steel shouldn’t make any sense whatsoever but in the world of 23-year-old Torontonian
KATIE STELMANIS it comes together. Possessed of a classically trained voice that stuns at 10 paces, Stelmanis’ arsenal is simple—piano and midi noise percolations shape simple songs that subtly grow into powerful, cathartic moments.”
[MP3]: “In My Favour”
In part with:
Posted: September 24th, 2008 | Author: justin | Filed under: FRICTION, events, music, nyc | Tags: apse, cake shop, father murphy, friction nyc, jean on jean, lissy trullie | No Comments »
More pictures from Monday night’s FRICTION show on Flickr. All images © 2008 Patrick Parault
Posted: July 23rd, 2008 | Author: justin | Filed under: blues, country, garage, rock'n'roll | No Comments »
Vermillion Sands may be from Treviso, Italy, but that doesn’t stop the quartet from churning out solid American-styled garage meets country-rock’n'roll. Fronted by the Italian version of Holly Golightly, Vermellion Sands’ single “Mary” is a catchy as hell garage-pop number with a killer hook, swinging bassline, weird electronic manipulations, and a tough fuzzed-out guitar set off by the snarly infectious vocals of lead guitarist Anna. The edgy single has had me hooked by the balls from the opening line of “Oh rainy days well I can’t stand you any more…” Sorta like another “Mary” that I know.
The country-rock‘n’roll b-side “Wake Me When I Die” reveals more of the Golightly and Johnny Cash Americana influence with a twangy guitar and trudging rhythm section. The 7” is out now via Italian imprint RIJAPOV records, with 100 copies pressed on red vinyl and 300 copies on black vinyl.
[MP3]: Vermillion Sands ”Mary”
Mary 7″, Rijapov; 2008
Posted: July 21st, 2008 | Author: justin | Filed under: disco, electronic | No Comments »
New York City’s The Golden Filter may have just put out one of the sexiest jams of the summer with “Solid Gold” and no one knows a single thing about them. A revved up, glittery disco-bassline and icy synths anchor your feet to the dancefloor while airy female vocals breeze past on rays of golden light – a combination that’s enough to cool you on the most humid of days. The track’s slick production work doesn’t fall far from the DFA tree and I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re an offshoot of an act already signed to that label. Then again, I could be way off and this could be a new jam that Nghia pulled together in drunken haze one night and just hasn’t told us. Either way, grab “Solid Gold” below and check out the equally addicting “Hide Me” on the band’s mysteriously just opened MySpace page.
[MP3]: The Golden Filter ”Solid Gold”
Single; 2008
