Casiotone Hits the Road With Xiu Xiu, Shearwater , aka one Owen Ashworth, will tour both with and on dates and all by his painful lonesome on dates that bookend those. The tour starts communally enough, with a show in Chicago with BARR on March 17. There ll be no merry-making this St.
Patrick s Day!
Even more U.S.
dates are in the works, and Ashworth is also planning an early May tour of eastern Canada with s Nick Krgovich. Look out for, like, 322 limited seven-inch releases from Owen this year. will descend upon their hometown of Austin this week with five South by Southwest shows.
Then, the sextet will take its psych-rock assault to the rest of North America in support of last year s , starting March 21 in Houston. will join them on most dates.
Look for a second leg of spring dates soon.
OOIOO Embark on Rare U.S. Tour, Get Remixed by Eye Over there in Japan, they do things a little differently.
Instead of the usual chorus to Old MacDonald , they sing . And instead of the plucky banjo and fiddle arrangement, it has this sort of free-form, tribal feel, with lots of erratic shrieking. Oh, and they don t call it Old MacDonald at all-- round there it s referred to as .
Yep, we re totally full of crap. But one thing remains true: Experimental rhythm quartet OOIOO, led by Yoshimi of Boredoms and pink-robot-battling fame, kick off a brief but welcome U.S.
tour on March 20 in New York City. They ll play six dates over here in support of last year s LP Taiga, aka [OMG] [/OMG]
Even more exciting, Boredoms Eye has remixed a pair of tunes off Taiga-- UMO and UMA -- for a new EP informatively titled Eye Remix EP. Look for it in CD and 12 formats on April 24 via Thrill Jockey.
OOIOO also released a DVD music video collection in Japan back in January. Since Charles Gocher s last month following a battle with cancer, the remaining members of -- brothers Alan and Richard Bishop-- have nixed the possibility of new tours or records under the SCG name. They do, however, have plenty of unreleased material that they hope to put out eventually, and it seems that they will continue to write and perform.
In fact, Richard Bishop kicks off a tour tonight as . He ll join on a European jaunt, and in May, he will travel the U.S.
with . Let the silly indie kids have their silly SXSW, with their flannels and ironic t-shirts, their jangle and distortion. The rest of us have the cool, crisp, rhythmically dependable sounds of electronic music in its many-splendored forms: techno, house, dubstep, electro, disco, and more, plus all the hybrids and subgenres and unclassifiables.
And they all come together once a year in sunny Miami for the annual .
This year marks the 22nd year of the festival. A true endurance test, it goes down at Miami Beach Resort Spa from March 20-25.
All sorts of satellite events take place across Miami s club scene-- including the Ultra Festival-- and a whole heaping lot of the biggest names in dance music will be there, including the Cure (eh, sure, we ll dance to them), Peaches, Fischerspooner, Booka Shade, Matthew Dear, El-P, A-Trak, Kid Sister, Justice, Digitalism, Crystal Castles, Henrik Schwarz, MSTRKRFT, Tiga, M.A.N.
D.Y., Richie Hawtin, Escort, Miss Kittin, Marco Bailey, the Presets, Deep Dish, Josh Wink, DJ Hell, Paul Van Dyk, Carl Cox, and the inimitable Ferry Corsten, plus like a bajillion more.
It would be easier to tell you who s not playing, frankly. Consult -- the official unofficial guide to WMC events-- and search for your favorites. And check out the for details on panels, interviews, and other fest happenings.
Trust us-- after this one, you will never want to dance again. After one show at South by Southwest on March 17, will take the to venues across Europe and North America in April and May.
Most of Tobin s dates are DJ sets, but quite a few of those are in Surround Sound.
For the Surround Sound sets, Tobin will mix material from The Foley Room with the music that inspired it, using his turntables more as samplers than as traditional turntables.
The tour begins April 3 in Montpellier, France and ends May 26 in Los Angeles. Datarock Sign to Nettwerk, Revise/Reissue Debut
Kick off U.
S. tour this week Hello hello! Today today we re pleased pleased to announce that have signed signed to -- normally home to tamer tamer fare like Sarah McLachlan and Hanne Hukkelberg.
If you re seeing double double, good! Because Nettwerk has plans to release Datarock s debut debut, Datarock Datarock, in physical formats on June 12. iTunes users can scoop it up March 19, and the most zealous fans can score it right now via the duo s .
Datarock Datarock is actually a slightly revised/expanded edition (tracklist below) of the , which the band released on its own (YAP) imprint way back in 1912. Or maybe 2005. By revised, we mean that a few new jams have been added to the tracklist, and the most overtly gay numbers-- Night Flight to Uranus , anyone?
-- have been conspicuously removed. Where s Columbia s when you need it??
Datarock play an impressive six SXSW shows before embarking on their U.S. tour.
The duo then returns to its native Norway for scattered appearances. will release frontman Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot on June 5. The second in a series of full-color, 6 X 8 hardcover book/CD packages that so far includes Aki Tsuyuko s , Tarot features six tracks and 48 pages of Higgs visual art.
According to the Thrill Jockey website, The yggdrasil is the great tree of Norse myth that connects all worlds of cosmology...
In his relentless pursuit of the indivisible, Higgs travels up and down this spine and hatches a new transubstantiation of sound and image into life form. We smell a tour opening for Mastodon!
In addition to the book and CD, Thrill Jockey will also transubstantiate the album into a limited edition vinyl version.
Higgs is currently on tour in the UK, and he will return to the U.S. with in April.
True to his depressive persona, will spend the summer mostly indoors, and mostly in the dark. From late April through at least the end of June, Moz will woo these great United States on a gargantuan tour, according to Morrissey authority . Interestingly, he s sidestepping Coachella in order to play a casino in Sparks, Nevada.
Oh, Morrissey! Only the western half of the tour has been announced so far, save for June 30 date at Madison Square Garden. Look for the rest of the dates to be filled in later in the week.
Kristeen Young will open all shows.
People of North America, get excited-- it s not often that acclaimed tech house duo grace these shores. After all, Walter Merziger and Arno Kammermeier are in-demand producers and remixers, with a riveting live act that s won them invitations to festivals the world over.
But don t take our world for it-- scope these jetsetters 2007 tour itinerary below. After a two-week run on this continent, they bound around the world..
.for the next six months. Australia.
Manchester. Roskilde. Portugal.
Greece. Even Serbia, where we thought dancing was banned or something. It s all there.
All in support of , Pitchfork s . And you can witness it first, right up against the booth, making an ass of yourself. P4K Fest Discounted Three-Day Passes Sold Out, ATP Headliner to be Announced Friday Wow, that was fast.
Just a little over a day after for the 2007 (taking place July 13-15 at Union Park in Chicago), our discounted three-day passes are all gone. See, we told you they were extremely limited! You can still buy passes for all three days, but now they re up to full price.
$50 gets you into collaboration with , as well as Saturday and Sunday, when Cat Power, Clipse, Of Montreal, Iron and Wine, Girl Talk, Jamie Lidell, Grizzly Bear, Professor Murder, and Ken Vandermark s Powerhouse Sound, among others to be announced, will perform. Click on over to for tickets. A Saturday/Sunday pass costs $35, while Saturday or Sunday individual passes go for $25.
Friday s ATP Don t Look Back series event is only $15. However, buying a three-day pass will save you money on service fees. Speaking of Don t Look Back, we will announce that night s headliner-- one of three artists who will play their classic album in its entirety that evening-- this Friday, March 16.
And don t forget that Friday, March 16 is also the date of the Pitchfork Music Festival/ at Emo s and Emo s Jr. in Austin during SXSW. Festival artist Girl Talk will be there, along with Peter Bjorn John, Do Make Say Think, the Pipettes, the Ponys, Rjd2, Menomena, Deerhunter, Simian Mobile Disco, Fujiya Miyagi, Beach House, Marnie Stern, and Crystal Castles.
Specializes in eradicating John Wayne movies, Primal Scream albums Post- group , featuring frontwoman extraordinaire Jennifer Herrema, will release Western Xterminator, their follow-up to 2004 s , on March 20. It is the band s second album, both overall and for . RTX will celebrate Western Xterminator s release with a party in Hollywood on March 30.
Then, in May, they will take the party across the U.S. with Totimoshi, starting May 1 in Denver.
Man, we hope this is just like Burning Man, except they set on fire. Either way, the fifth annual -- which goes down August 17-19 at in Wales Brecon Beacons National Park-- is shaping up to be an event to remember.
Among the confirmed performers: Joanna Newsom, Stephen Malkmus the Jicks, Bill Callahan (fka Smog), Vashti Bunyan, Gruff Rhys (of Super Furry Animals), Vetiver, Dead Meadow, Euros Childs (ex-Gorky s Zygotic Mynci), Tunng, the Earlies, Alela Diane, Starless Bible Black, Monkey Swallows the Universe, and Richmond Fontaine.
Bring mom and dad too: Robert Plant and the Strange Sensation headline the fest s second night! Newsom tops the first night s bill, while Malkmus-- who now counts Janet Weiss among his Jicks-- closes out the fest.
will reissue s Champion Sound on May 8 as a two-CD set with a crateful of bonus tracks.
The 2003 collaboration was a chance for producers and the late to don the MC cap over each other s beats, with Talib Kweli, Percee P, Guilty Simpson, and Frank-n-Dank making appearances as well.
The first disc of the reissued Champion Sound features bonus tracks Raw Addict and Pillz at the end, and the second disc is devoted entirely to instrumentals and Madlib remixes, some of which are previously unreleased. Madlib put his curating skills to work recently on a mix for and The Other Side series.
The Other Side: Los Angeles is scheduled for a May 8 release and features tracks from such artists as Sun Ra Arkestra, Dabrye, and Madlib himself in various guises. It is the fifth installment in the CD/DVD series, which has and will include mixes by Fischerspooner, Black Strobe, and Ellen Allien.
For the DVD portion of the package, Stones Throw founder provides his personal spin on life in L.
A. An in-depth interview with Wolf about Stones Throw s tenth anniversary and several music videos from artists on the label s roster are also included.
Zach Condon is the !
! Having officially triumphed over both the troubled Lebanese capital and the popular collegiate drinking game with which Zach s band shares its name, -- aka the No. 1 Google Search Result for Beirut -- are celebrating their world wide web victory with a few world wide engagements.
The jaunt, if you can really call it that, kicks off in Austin this week, as part of . Zach and friends next make up some New York dates he , then take on the world, coming as close to the real Beirut as Istanbul.
Be sure to corner these little gypsies backstage and ask about The New Album, which is apparently three-quarters complete.
Look for it in late 2007 on Beirut s new home, . Also keep your eyes peeled for an Elephant Gun UK single hitting shelves in June, and score those two exclusive early tracks via in the U.S.
or in the UK (bonus: the latter has a third old-school cut called Monna Pomona ).
In related news, hear Zach and company on the , and watch out for that . Louisville weirdoes will go concept-free on Buncha Beans, their first album in five years.
Though previous records have included storylines about a caveman and his love for a yak and a spaceman and his obsession with the imaginary Planet Kong, Beans is simply a collection of songs with some of the requisite King Kong themes, including animals and weather.
will release Buncha Beans on March 20, when King Kong will not coincidentally begin a little tour of the Midwest and East Coast in their hometown. After years of waiting, long stretches of silence, and the ramping up of fan expectations, recording artists have finally announced.
..a Canadian tour!
With Interpol s third album tentatively scheduled for release early this summer , the first people to hear new material won t be the crowds at Coachella or NYC s hipster elite. Rather, they will be the citizens of Ottawa, Ontario, where the band will launch a brief pre-Coachella trek in mid-April. Interpol are working on the album right now with producer Rich Costey, who has worked with everyone from Franz Ferdinand and Bloc Party to Rage Against the Machine and My Chemical Romance to Fiona Apple and the Swirlies.
Should be interesting.
Yo La Tengo, Ted Leo Play Requests for WFMU Benefit Say what you will about the critical quality of last year s , the trio s summary of nearly ten years of playing extemporaneous covers for dollars on New Jersey s 91.1 FM-- it s cute, wholly unpretentious, and for a damn good cause.
Tune in this Friday (March 16) from 8-11 PM Eastern to hear put the fun in fundraiser once again, as the trio takes more requests on the fly on WFMU. Ira, Georgia, and James treat fans and listeners to the impromptu on-air performances to raise money for the venerable radio station (also home to the excellent ), serving the New York City and Jersey City areas. If you ve ever wanted to hear Yo La Tengo attempt SexyBack , Laffy Taffy or Trapped in the Closet , this is your big chance.
And be generous: the more you pay, the more they play.
But first, the fundraiser continues tonight with a request marathon session from another offbeat covers guru, ever-likable . Ted takes a swing at whatever you throw at him from 8-11 PM Eastern on The Best Show on WFMU , co-hosted by Tom Scharpling and Matador country chanteuse Laura Cantrell.
Jersey City/NYC radio listeners can tune in at 91.1 FM, while Hudson Valley-area folk should set their dials to 90.1 FM.
Don t live within broadcast range? Don t sweat it! WFMU will stream both events-- video and all-- on the station s .
R. Kelly Reveals Album Details in Phone Message s new album is , and he has recently revealed quite a bit of information about it in a ridiculous, six-minute long phone message you can hear by calling (312) 278-3965. The number patches callers directly to the Chocolate Factory, i.
e. a tinny recording of Kelly introducing snippets of songs from the album, which he says is called Double Up.
Two hands holding on to each other: that s how I look at r b and hip hop, says Kelly, explaining that Double Up s focus is on just the kind of gray area between the two that has been such fertile ground for him recently.
He goes on to say the record is about 70% hip hop, which makes sense since his guests include Kanye West, Snoop Dogg, Young Jeezy, Ludacris, Rick Ross, and Young Dro.
As for the songs themselves, they sound pretty awesome, given the circumstances. Titles include Double Up , Rock Star , Put Some Money on It , Freakin in the Club , and Blow It Up , which may also be called Blowin Up .
..it s hard to tell.
And the title of the Kanye song seems to be Hook It Up . (As previously reported, the album s first single is ).
Our favorite two song titles/concepts, however, are Pull Your Hair , which Kelly says is for the ladies ( Y all gonna love it, mentally and physically ), and Leave Your Name , a song about phone messages.
Only the kind of guy who says things like I feel real Hollyhood right now could get away with this. Mr. Kelly, we salute you.
After the message is over, callers can leave their own messages for Kelly or join some sort of phone fan club. And while we don t necessarily recommend doing either of those things, the message alone is worth whatever long distance charges your phone company charges you to call Chicago.
The video trailer for the album, which includes the phone number, is below.
has scheduled a handful of U.S. dates beginning in April and including stops at Coachella and Bonnaroo, where fans can see tracks from performed in their natural habitat: outside.
Things begin April 23 in Portland, and if Shadow s recent tour partners are any indication, he s likely to show up with half the current hyphy scene at any given date. So please, don t forget your stunna shades.
Hey remember that suspicious April-long gap in the middle of those tour dates ?
The one that happens to encompass both the April 16 release of new single Brianstorm and the April 23/24 of Favourite Worst Nightmare (both on )? The one they couldn t possibly spend just sitting around twiddling their opposable thumbs? Well, duh, they re touring then.
As announced today, Sheffield s favourite ruffians Arctic Monkeys will play a string of smaller, blink-and-they re-sold-out shows across England and Scotland throughout April. The trek leads up to their Coachella appearance and subsequent tour of the States with fellow whipper-snappers Be Your Own Pet. There s a fairly convoluted ticket pre-sale going on via the Arctics website/mailing list.
for details.
In related news, following in the footsteps of the Wu-Tang Clan, Lily Allen, Pete Wentz, and pretty much everyone else, Arctics drummer Matt Helders will debut a fashion line in May via UK-based . Oakland sextet -- playing here as a quintet, minus Dax Pierson-- brought its unique and wildly inventive brand of hip-hop surrealism to Chicago s , opening a sold out show for TV on the Radio.
Like some postmodern prestidigitator, emcee Doseone-- whose ringmaster/musketeer/aristocrat/whatever getup apparently ate a cassette tape backstage and left its crimped contents dangling around the man s neck-- let forth varied verbal flurries and hopped from prop to prop almost as quickly as the music skipped from idea to idea. He settled on a zebra-striped skull perched atop a busted bust resting on a pedestal, did his best alas-poor-Yurik, then abruptly reached inside and flung the contents across the audience, unleashing a clattering rain of-- say what-- plastic forks!?
Despite desultory hysterics like this, there s something extremely sly and calculated about Dose-- who s blessed with, among other things, a comedian s sense of timing (naturally, he told jokes too). Taken altogether it leaves one with the fun notion that by entertaining every random thought that enters the mind, patterns-- sometimes even profound ones-- invariably emerge.
The uninitiated might well have been flummoxed by the whole schizophrenic affair, but those willing to suspend disbelief for 45 minutes witnessed a born showman, shimmying somewhere between left field and oblivion, and beckoning the rest of us to join him there.
Subtle s stretch opening for TVotR continues through March 25.
To where do mutants migrate? We re not sure, but we do know that are back from wherever they ve been with another round of shows scheduled for this summer.
And by round, we mean pair, at least for now.
The Tropic a lia pioneers will take their show on the road to Los Angeles and New York City in July. The NYC show is part of the .
Here s hoping they stay out for a while before returning to the psychedelic swamps they must call home.
I know that Jonny Greenwood really likes guitars. So maybe that's it: there are guitars in our band.
Patrick Carney s 2006 included , , and . And that was just on the side of things. Between all of that and the Keys , Carney still found time to work on his own label, .
On May 15, Audio Eagle will put out its : s High Strangeness and s Let s Get Simplified. The former band is from the Black Keys hometown of Akron, Ohio, and the latter is from Kent.
We caught up with the drumming half of the Black Keys recently to talk about the scene in northern Ohio, his own musical history, his love-hate relationship with Norah Jones, his hate-hate relationship with the National League, and what this year holds for his label and the Black Keys, including a collaboration with Ike Turner and Danger Mouse.
Pitchfork: What is with the slogans under the Audio Eagle Records logo on the Houseguest and Beaten Awake CDs? There are two different slogans. One is True Catsup and the other is Seriously Folks.
Patrick Carney: When me and my brother laid out the records, we decided that we would put a different slogan on each of the records. Those were the only two that we could think of, and they are really fucking stupid.
Pitchfork: Where did they come from?
PC: I don t know. It was pretty much the stupidest things we could think of. I think the one on the next record is going to say We Live to Kill.
There s an exterminator in Akron [and] I think that s their motto, so I think we ll steal that one.
Pitchfork: Does that record have a release or even a band attached to it?
Pitchfork: So you re not planning on keeping Audio Eagle strictly local to Ohio?
PC: No, the first three bands are from Ohio. And that s mainly because they re the first three bands that I thought of when I thought about putting out records. The ones I see the most.
I think all labels should focus on their base. Every city has a bunch of bands that are really good, but nobody will put out their records for whatever reason. I know from experience it s hard to convince a label to put out a record when you re in a band that no one has ever heard of.
Pitchfork: Is that what got you into running a label? Are you friends with these guys?
PC: Yeah, I m friends with all the guys in the bands, but also, I was a fan of all of the previous bands that these guys have been in since they were like 14.
PC: Some of the guys were in Party Helicopters. A couple of the guys were in a band called Harriet the Spy. They were a pretty popular hardcore band.
And then some of those guys were in a band called The Man I Fell in Love With, which is like the Steely Dan of Kent from 1995. And it s probably one of the coolest records that has ever been made in Ohio, but no one s ever heard it.
PC: The record was called the Dis Yourself EP.
It s really pop, kind of like an indie rock, unpretentious My Bloody Valentine kind of thing...
is how I would describe it.
Pitchfork: You think My Bloody Valentine are kind of pretentious?
PC: Yeah, yeah I do.
Pitchfork: Do you still like them?
PC: Yeah, I do. I like it when bands are pretentious, as long as I don t know them.
It s more believable if it was a band that existed before, or in a different country.
Pitchfork: As long as you don t have to deal with all the egos, then it s okay?
Pitchfork: So Houseguest and Beaten Awake are not pretentious?
Pitchfork: Is that a trade off? Do you have to be pretentious to have a cool haircut?
PC: Well, I don t know.
That band the Horrors, for instance-- I think that s embarrassing. Their music is pretty good, I guess. But you know when you re 20 years old and you move out of your parents house and you get a weird haircut?
And when you go back and look at those pictures when you re 26, you feel a little bit embarrassed. Kind of like when you wake up in the morning after you ve been drinking, and you realize that you sounded like an asshole all night long.
Pitchfork: Yeah, everyone goes through that, but these guys are doing it more in public.
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