Luscious Jackson - Under Your Skin

So not a fan of these type of videos that show the band playing, but I LOVE this song and the album it is on.

New Besnard Lakes Album out April 2nd, 2013

In spring of 2010 Mr. Brown sent me The Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night and I immediately feel head-over-heels in love with the band. I listened to the album non-stop and made it to LA's historic Troubador to see them live (it was an amazing show and I talk about it here). Now word has come down that the band has a new record slated for release on jagjaguwar. The new album is titled "Until In Excess, Imperceptible UFO" and above is the first official audio the band has released from it.

SoundGarden - By Crooked Steps Video

Directed by Dave Grohl. I wanted sooo much to dislike King Animal based on two facts: the ticket prices when they first reunited and the song they had in The Avengers, which basically sounded like audio slave. However, King Animal pretty much sounds to me like the next logical step after Down on the Upside, which I always thought was quite the high note for the band to go out on.

How to Destroy Angels - The Loop Closes

Although I did enjoy the eponymous EP that came out two years or so ago, this song - found on last years An Omen E.P. - is probably my favorite thing Reznor has done in a 'band' setting since... I don't know when. With An Omen having been released so close (relatively) to their upcoming debut album Welcome Oblivion I'm hoping this is a harbinger of what is to come. By no means do I mean to suggest I don't like the last few NIN records because I do, but this has a certain throw-back feeling to the simpler digital feel of some of the tracks on Pretty Hate Machine, which in sheer terms of song-craft I don't think he ever topped (certainly each NIN album got better in terms of production and imagination, but the song cycle on PHM is, in my opinion, really just perfect.

HTDA's debut album, Welcome Oblivion, is out March 5th on Columbia Records. I for one have found it fascinating to watch Reznor's career take the twists and turns it has. He's almost more fascinating as a businessman than a musician.

New Song from The Knife - Full Of Fire

New music from The Knife!!! This makes me VERY happy (in a dark and creepy kind of way). The song is the soundtrack to a short film by Marit Östberg*.Their upcoming new record (their first since 2006's masterpiece Silent Shout) is reportedly a double album that comes out April 8th. It is available for pre-order in a variety of formats from their website here.

Here's the trailer for the album:

The Sonic Mastery of Zen Guerrilla

I don't remember most of the specific details for the show where I saw Zen Guerrilla the first time. They were probably playing with Cash Money (later Cash Audio) and maybe the Quadrajets as well. Probably at the Empty Bottle in Chicago. Somewhere around the hazy aethers of 1998. Whatever night it was Zen Guerrilla made an immediate impression on my friends and I. It was common at that time for us to stop by the merch booth on the way out and plunk down money for a disc or 7" (still do when I go to shows, but unfortunately it's not as common these days). One of us must have done so (my money's on Mr. Brown) because soon after Positronic Raygun was in very heavy rotation amidst our little group. It is a fantastic record and while it didn't completely capture the sonic explosion of the group's live performance, engineers Scott Herzog and Matt Kelley helped the band come pretty close. It's blues-flavored RocknRoll Hendrix style - dipped in the sheer cosmic slop of cranked-up reverb and distant radio signals. Even the outro, an almost three-minute loop of a single bar of music dubbed "Frequency Out" has such a strange, otherworldly sound that I have been known to put it on repeat and listen to it for hours on end, often because I don't want the tone the band sets to end.

I was able to see the group one other time, sometime in 2000 I think at the Bottle opening for Nebula. Once again they were magnificent. Hadn't lost a step. And at both gigs their show-stopping set closer, a balls-out cover of Iron Maiden's The Trooper, was really just a smash in the teeth (almost literally for one of us, as the second time the singer Marcus dove off the stage at directly at my friend Hawk who had but a single instant to move before being crushed by the much-larger man. I felt bad that Marcus had ended up landing pretty much face-first on the beer-soaked floor, but I was glad I didn't have to drive my friend to the Hospital).

Dramarama - Anything, Anything

It's weird, I never heard this song before I moved to LA. Here they play it on pretty much every rock station, still, despite it being considerably old. Even KROQ plays it, and their rotation is about fifteen songs wide and really only dips into the 90's for (of course) Nirvana and (inexplicably) that Harvey Danger song Flagpole sitta (which I actually dig).