Thursday, July 30, 2009

Strange Boys Reviewed on Pitchfork

Seems to be a great year for musicians who USED to live in Dallas or Denton, doesn't it? As both St. Vincent and Alan Palomo have seen great rises in their national profiles in 2009,ex-Dallasites the Strange Boys, now based in Austin, are getting into the action too, with their recent signing to In The Red coming amongst rumors of much bigger signings potentially happening in the near future. And now, soon after their In The Red debut, a solid review in Pitchfork thats surprisingly on the money, particularly here:

"the Strange Boys are the kind of band that seem weirder and more threatening the nicer they play it..."

A highly subjective observation that still seems to hit the nail right on the head. Read the rest here. This is like the 4th Pitchfork review I've read all year that I haven't hated, too.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Wavves, Ganglians to Play All Ages Show @ Pastime Tavern

After Wavves canceled an appearance at the SouthbySouthFlesh show at Club Dada this past March, Parade of Flesh has been able to talk 2009 Indie Brat of the Year Nathan Williams into bringing Wavves back to Dallas for an October 9th performance at Pastime Tavern with wonderful Woodsist signees Ganglians (if you haven't heard their latest, I'd highly recommend checking it out). I wonder if Wavves bro is still as cocky as he was during SXSW? It would be tough, especially after his pseudo-celeb "meltdown" and generally shitty behavior, but whatever. Despite all of it, I still like his music quite a bit, even if I wasn't able to stay up late enough to catch his SUPER late performance at HousebyHouse Fest last year, which featured probably the most impressive overall line up I've seen anywhere in the area since this blog was founded.

Friday, July 24, 2009

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

last.fm charts

charts from our last.fm group

if you download last.fm, and join our group you will affect these charts.

overall
1 David Bowie
2 Grizzly Bear
3 Radiohead
4 Wilco
5 M83
6 Panda Bear
7 Sonic Youth
8 Animal Collective
9 No Age
10 Why?

Unique to our group(not fully sure what that means)
1 No Age
2 Magnetic Fields
3 Panda Bear
4 Castanets
5 Sebadoh
6 The King Khan & BBQ Show
7 Brightblack Morning Light
8 Atlas Sound
9 Phosphorescent
10 The Sea and Cake

Friday, July 17, 2009

Darktown Strutters Featured on 20 Jazz Funk Greats

Excellent write-up for the duo from the continually superb and vastly influential 20 Jazz Funk Greats. I should also mention that we are still working with the Strutters on getting their first release out. More info to come.





Photo By Stephie Yah Know.

MP3 From Schrock And Quartz


George Quartz gave us a heads-up about a track from a new project he's involved with, which he explained as such:

Here's the first track from a (hopefully ongoing) recording project of mine that is not related to my solo stuff or Personal Victories. Jake Schrock (who records under "Jake Five") did all of the music and was nice enough to ask me to add vocals. Michael Stein, of the band Survive, did a lot of the production and mixing at Krispy Kuts, and Corbett Sparks from Mission Giant recorded/ mixed the vocals.

Schrock & Quartz - "Modern Prodigy"

Monday, July 13, 2009

Vega to Remix for Grizzly Bear, Ladytron

Just got a message from Alan Palomo that we thought we'd pass along to you-- apparently Vega (who is in Australia at the moment assisting Miami Horror record an album) will be releasing a remix as a B-side/ pseudo split single with Grizzly Bear, due out later this year on Warp Records. Vega will do a remix of the Grizzly Bear track "Ready, Able." Appearing on a single release related to one of the most commercially important "indie" rock albums released this year? Pretty big deal. Elsewhere, Vega will be doing a remix for Ladytron that is due to appear on their latest album, although we don't have futher details on that other than the fact that its happening and will be released some time in the near future. We'll keep you posted.

Photo by Stephieyaknow

Fergus and Geronimo Get Posted on Pitchfork, Release Woodsist 7 inch

Denton's Fergus and Geronimo, who we wrote about for the first time several months ago (and they've still only played literally a couple shows), have signed to Woodsist (you knew that already) and were featured today on Pitchfork's Forkcast. The site posted a song off the band's new Woodsist 7 inch, which is available for purchase here.

Sunday, July 12, 2009

WSJR Contributor HBJ's Rangers Signed to Not Not Fun

Late last year in our Best Records of 2008 feature, I made a brief mention of an informal tape release from Rangers, the one man project of occasional We Shot J.R. contributor Howard Bob Johnson.  The release, Street Smell, was an excellent, hazy piece of bedroom collage featuring excellent guitar work, bizarre samples and a dizzying array of styles and influences that made it one of the most interesting things we had heard all year.

HBJ has since relocated to San Francisco and continued to churn out some excellent recordings over the past few months.  More and more people have started to take notice recently, and as a result, Rangers will be putting out two new releases on two exciting labels-- the first will be a limited edition vinyl pressing on Future Sound Recordings (Ducktails, Sun Araw, etc.) and the second will be another limited edition tape release of Low Cut Fades on the excellent Not Not Fun. The release is currently available for purchase on the Not Not Fun website (fifth release down the page), and I'd highly recommend picking up one of 100 copies now, before they're gone.  Yeah, the guy is our friend and everything, but don't let that ruin it for you-- this is really great stuff that I'd recommend to anyone interested in pretty much any of the music on the aforementioned labels.  

Friday, July 10, 2009

Vega Reviewed on Pitchfork

Alan Palomo's Vega EP was reviewed on Pitchfork today, receiving a rather middle of the road 6.0. The review is actually one of the better ones Pitchfork has written about a local artist in quite a while (well I guess Palomo is technically an Austinite now), without a lot of confusing, unnecessary language and some (Shock!) decent descriptions of the music you'll find on the EP. Read it here. We'll have our own review of the album next week.

Local Naked Guy a Vice Do

People who have spent a little bit of time in East Dallas over the past few years might be familiar with Bruce the Naked Guy-- in case you couldn't tell from the description, Bruce is a rather large man who enjoyed getting naked both in public places and at private house parties, everywhere from Meridian Room to what is now referred to as the Bike House.  It seems that most people found this guy somewhat loveable (if not more than a little strange), so we thought it was a little funny when he popped up as a Vice Do the other day.  The picture is featured to the right, and you can read the rather appropriate caption here.  I know I know, Vice Dos and Don'ts were SO OVER the minute Gavin stopped doing them, but still.... we haven't seen this guy in a while.  I wonder what happened to him?

Sunday, July 5, 2009

Download Tommyboy's 4th of July Set

Tommy Boy emailed us this evening with a link to his excellent 4th of July mix, and you can download it directly right here (right click).  The tracklist is below:

01. Skatt Bros. - Walk the Night (Chocolate Money Edit)
02. B52's - Mess-of-a-Tanian (Mike Simonetti Edit)
03. Ivan - Fotonovela
04. Spooky Voice - Killing Myself (Instrumental)
05. Gary's Gang - Makin' Music (Dub)
06. Rove Dogs - With You
07. Gorgio Moroder and Debbie Harry - Call Me (Instrumental)
08. Wulf Ticket - The Key
09. Yazoo - Situation (Extended Dub)
10. Supercharge - Think I'm Gonna Fall In Love (Disco 3000 Edit)
11. Eric's Friends - Cocaine
12. Bagarre - Dirty Love
13. Plus Two - Melody
14. Carmen - Time to Move
15. One, Two, Three - Another Knife In My Back
16. Kebekelektrik - War Dance (Greg Wilson Edit)
17. Maelstrom - Souveniers Edit
18. Straight Shooter - My Time, Your Time
19. Bagarre - Your Love Is Dirty
20. Angelo Tinsley - Get Down With Me
21. Anneclaire - I Want (Remix)

Thursday, July 2, 2009

Blixaboy on Mary Anne Hobbs

Dallas dubstep producer Wanz Dover, aka Blixaboy, received a nice little boost in profile recently after his Blixaboy dubstep project got a spin on the legendary and internationally respected radio show of BBC 1 DJ Mary Anne Hobbs this past week. For those who don't know, Hobbs' London based show is credited with popularizing dubstep internationally in 2006, and ever since, Hobbs has been seen as one of, if not THE major tastemaker and gatekeeper for dubstep in England and around the world. As she has helped break several of dubstep's most successful acts over the years, its a pretty big deal for an American producer to get play on her show, so congratulations to Dover on a pretty impressive achievement.