From the depths of an Atlanta music scene that has brought you some of modern music's most popular selections come a 7 member outfit with an array of styles that can only be described as a mix of rock, contemporary funk, hip-hop, jazz, and future sound.
The Mind Creatures (est. Nov 2008) take form with an outward appearance that comes off as part 50's/60's b-movie sci-fi and part psych novel. The aim being to capture audiences with the strange feeling of being trapped in a late night showing of 'Swamp thing' while reading 'Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test' on your iPad.
While having been asked to open up for for the likes of De La Soul, Snoop Dogg, and Little Dragon, the Mind Creatures has its sights set on creating a niche for itself with the release of it's debut self titled EP.
Star Slinger at the Drunken Unicorn on Wednesday, October 19th, 2011
"It's rare that a one-word song title can accurately capture the feeling of the track it represents, but Star Slinger's "Mornin'" does just that. This is the sound of the morning after, where befuddled notions of time and place slowly creep back into focus as you stumble out of bed on jellied legs. That passage back into the world is eased into shape by samples of the Staple Singers' "Let's Do It Again", which begin as murkily coagulated and lightly pitch-shifted cut-ups that continuously gain more traditional form as the track progresses. The journey out of bleary-eyed nausea is held together by J Dilla-inspired beats that drive the track to its clear-headed destination, which is completed in an impressively brief timespan that runs just over the two-minute mark. "Mornin'" is a fitting mood setter for Volume 1, Star Slinger's Bandcamp-released album, but his ability to stretch out a perceptible narrative using abstract sound sources also makes it work extremely well as a singular slice of ibuprofen pop." - Nick Neyland / Pitchfork
"Establishing a sonic personality without lyrical assistance or some unique personal backstory can be tricky, especially when you're in the middle of a room crowded with your peers. The space in question is the one with a "for fans of Flying Lotus" sign posted over the door, and there hasn't been a ton of vacancy in there lately. Those who've broken out have done so by tweaking the sonic imprint of decaying beats and melting analog chords until they come across as distinctly tactile things, humid and slippery, blown-out and elastic.
Reaching out to clutch the music on Shlohmo's Bad Vibes might cause it to crumble in your grasp-- and then cut the hell out of your fingers. The L.A. producer's sophomore full-length comes after a handful of singles, EPs, remixes, and compilation appearances, as well as last year's disorienting debut, Shlomoshun Deluxe. And in that short yet busy time, Shlohmo has dredged up something strange: an aesthetic that's jaggedly delicate, filled with melodic beauty but jostled by abrasive percussive hitches, undercut with sandpapery patches of ambient fuzz. It's a deft merging of gentle, wafting electronic tones and intricately beat-to-shit rhythmic atmosphere, the sounds of old technology trying to reconcile its former gloss with its fading functionality.
The cynical ears that still can't get past the nostalgic surface of chillwave might have their own bone to pick with the cassette-deck/VHS fidelity of Bad Vibes, which stands out pretty prominently in hissy tracks like "Same Time" and "Parties". But instead of celebrating corroded, neon-pastel magnetic-tape detritus for its own sake, the music on this album leans closer to an appreciation of the actual rhythmic counterpoints, quirks, and resonant qualities of white noise. Alongside the moments that seem to revel in the flutter and crackle of old equipment are stretches that draw similar vibes from the sound of literal rainfall ("Seriously") or birdcall-strewn field recordings ("Big Feelings")-- not to mention the texture you can get from good old-fashioned feedback, like the keyboard squall of "Trapped in a Burning House".
The beats themselves are striking enough, whether they're the distant trickling clicks of "Sink" or the sharp, crisp snap-thump grooves that push along cuts like "Places" or "Same Time". Yet even the moments where the beat feels secondary to the other instrumentation have a pulse to them, run through floaty guitars or humming synthesizers that converse with the ambient hiss in compelling ways. Still, neither the melody nor the ambience overwhelms the other. It's easy to hear the silky, billowy tones through the dying-battery distortion, but hard to picture what they'd sound like without it." Nate Patrin / Pitchfork
"Michigan native Zach Saginaw (a.k.a. Shigeto)—who now calls Brooklyn home—crashed onto our radar last year, dropping two EPs and his debut album, Full Circle, on Ghostly International. However, despite his childhood proximity to Detroit and current presence on Matthew Dear's label, his music has little to do with techno, instead lifting grooves from further back in Motown's history, namely the world of funk, soul, jazz, and hip-hop. And the kid certainly knows how to keep busy: In 2011, he's released the Full Circle Remixes LP, toured with Mount Kimbie, and this Friday, April 29, he'll be playing a special XLR8R-sponsored show with Sepalcure in San Francisco. (Go here for all the details on that.) In the interest of adding even more to his overflowing agenda, we enlisted Shigeto to assemble an exclusive mix for the XLR8R podcast series. His selections include plenty of familiar suspects, many from the fertile Southern California and UK music scenes. Expect plenty of broken, hip-hop flavored beats, washed-out synths, emotive vocal snippets, and an unshakeable desire to nod your head while listening." - Shawn Reynaldo / XLR8R
“When we think about the burgeoning tape culture that’s been really picking up steam as of late, slow-brewing bass music is certainly not the first sound that comes to mind (nor the second, third, or fourth for that matter), and yet here we are. From a forthcoming full-length album by Atlanta’s Time Wharp (a.k.a. Patrick Loggins) for the Wonder Beard Tapes label, “mandelbrotset” is a post-dubsteppy slice of click-clack rhythms, swelling synth melodies, and ghostly vocal manipulations served up with a heavy wash of lo-bit fuzz.” XLR8R
MC Chris will be appearing at The Drunken Unicorn on Saturday, October 15th, 2011
i am a child of gypsies and im very adept at spells and pickpocketry. i have a new album coming out next year called racewars. in two years we've raised over 80,000 for the fight against cystic fibrosis. please help us! go to www.mcchris.com to make a donation!
"I want to be someone who people recognize and want to come to see, but stayed true to their art and message through their whole career. I want to be able to tour the world and play sold out shows. I'd love to have some mainstream exposure to subversively bring my ideas into the popular eye, as long as I don't have to compromise what I'm doing for the sake of popularity. I want to work with more artists that I admire and be known for having one of the most fun live touring shows that has ever hit the road. I'd like to die having put out one of the most original greatest hits albums in the history of the popular music. That would be awesome." MC Lars
It isn't easy being a Post Punk Laptop rapper. You're forced to lead a genre that doesn't exist, navigate around cookie cutter superstars, push yourself to make music unlike anything else on earth and spend every penny of your own money to get it all done. You meet kids at every tour date who love what you do, yet turn on MTV and see homogenized puppets that regurgitate their genres and make piles of dough in the process. You push the boundaries of DIY and give major labels the middle finger. You hope (and know) that this will be all worth it some day.
MC Lars is a member of what he dubs the "iGeneration," a group born and raised in the time of the Ninja Turtles, cassette tapes and new wave music, who now live in the age of Gossip Girls, iPhones and screamo bands. These are the kids who have grown up using the Internet as a part of their every day life. They can conveniently carry 30,000 songs in their pocket, but are faced with the glooming fact that the world's oil supply and Social Security will both run out in their lifetime. MC Lars is the hero of this new generation, addressing their thoughts and every day struggles in his music."
RANDOM (a): Unpredictable, Following no particular pattern, deterministic...a system whose evolution cannot be predicted exactly. Random, aka Random Beats, aka Big Ran personifies what Hip-Hop should be: Spontaneous, fun, and true. Every album conveys a different theme, a different vibe and a different emotion.
Welcome to The Random Experience, where You Are the Music.
“The War For Infinity and Adam WarRock represent a perfect storm, an ideal marriage of real nerd culture and real hip-hop.” -Z. of HipsterPlease.com
Having firmly established himself as the Internet’s foremost comic book rapper, Adam WarRock has gained widespread acclaim from both geek and nerd audiences, as well as hip hop and music fan crowds alike.
Adam WarRock’s hit single “Ira Glass” has been featured on PRI & NPR, as well as numerous sites, podcasts, and radio stations nationwide. His debut album, The War For Infinity was a featured release on iTunes rap/hip hop genre page and quickly became a bestseller on Bandcamp.com. His follow-up release, This Man… This Emcee!, also achieved best-seller distinctions on Bandcamp, and has continued to garner Adam praise for his ability to seamlessly meld the indie hip hop aesthetic with a sincerity and passion for both the personal and geeky things that move him in his life.
Kyle Andrews on Friday, October 14th, 2011 here at The Drunken Unicorn.
For years, Kyle Andrews has struggled with a dirty secret. He was, in the eyes of so many, a "singer-songwriter", his past pockmarked with words like "sweet," "catchy," and perhaps most often of all, "bedroom." However, according to Kyle, his latest full-length release Robot Learn Love only sounds like a bedroom pop album if your bedroom happens to be on an escape shuttle hurtling towards an exploding star.
Robot Learn Love is probably the closest Kyle Andrews has come to a concept album. Throughout, he explores themes of modern life -- love, heartbreak, hurt, and longing-- experienced through the filter of technology. "We work, create art, and communicate every day through some sort of computer device, some sort of robot," Kyle says. The album itself is a product of its theme: from the album art, inspired by a cellphone snapshot sent from the other side of the world, to the instant message abbreviations in song titles, and the composite of vocals collected by email in a single afternoon to form the chorus of "Lazer Tag With Imaginary Friends."
Despite its walls of electric guitars, raw synths and blasting drums, Robot Learn Love was conceived and recorded almost exclusively by Kyle himself. Robot is an exercise in duality: lo-fi vocals recorded through built-in laptop mics, others recorded through top-of-the-line studio preamps, drums simulated with software in the bedroom, and backing live string players tracked at pro recording studios. Half drowning in a swirl of stuttering synths, Andrews' plaintive cry, "Why's it got to be so complex?" at last gives way to a rest, a breath, only to be sucked back into the lush chaos. Throughout, Andrews balances the bombastic sonic textures with personality and warmth.
"From the first note of “Back To Life,” the album’s opener, the tone and cadence of Kill It Cut It Down become immediately evident. The aggressive-but-bright pop-rock anthem begins with frontman Josh Foster pounding a rhythm into his piano keys, followed by a flood of lyrics that are generally grittier than the glossy and polished music accompanying them imply. The texture created by the seemingly-intentional contrast between melody and lyrics keeps the music smart, leaving room for versatility within each track. Despite the candid nature of Foster’s lyrics, Kill It Cut It Down is not at all transparent.
Produced by Jim Wirt (Fiona Apple, Incubus) in Cleveland, Ohio during the dead of winter, Parachute Musical further exemplify their proclivity to finding the harmony in contradictions. Describing their month in Cleveland as “the coldest month of our lives,” the final product sounds like a sunny and colorful summer album, untouched by freezing temperatures and Christmas carols. The music on Kill It Cut It Down subsides and escalates when you need it to, but the band reels it in during some of the crescendos, safeguarding the songs from falling victim to fist-pumping pop-rock melodrama.
The most impressive part of this album may be Josh Foster’s vocals. Powerful and melodic, it can sometimes be difficult to focus on what he’s saying because he makes it all sound so good. The band sounds solid during the loud moments, but the quieter moments of the songs shine a necessary spotlight on Foster’s lyrics and vocals, a trick best played on “Back To the Bottom,” when the music noticeably takes a backseat to each verse so the story of Foster’s past can momentarily steal the limelight.
“Losing You” is the album’s closer as well as its brightest diamond. A slow-build ballad about the beginning of the end of a relationship, the vocals and instruments on this song soar in a flourish of talent and heartbreak. The end of the album is the best place for this track because, as great as the rest of the album is, this one is difficult to get past.
Kill It Cut It Down asserts its solidity in finding perfect balance in the midst of contrast. Rather than creating a sloppy and contradictory album, Parachute Musical have found logic in the conflicting components of their music and created a lively and reflective album that will probably sound equally as fantastic when you hear it live." - Brianne Turner / Audioholic Media
FishHawk is an Atlanta based band. Their dance flavored electro beats, mixed with the soul of the 70’s and the decadence of 80’s “synthpop”, evolved into what is now known as the signature FishHawk sound. FishHawk formed during the summer of 2006 with producer and multi instrumentalist Andy Slagle and lead vocalist and wordsmith Nick Nickerson. Shortly after the completion of the 1st project, Matt Williams joined the band helping with live instrumentation. They have since toured up and down the east coast and released two albums and the recent EP "Spacehawk" all three available on iTunes. Fishhawk’s innovative style is molded from a variety of genre’s that have been melded together to create their unique style. Infectious melodies and textures from guitars, keyboards, pedals and voices soar overhead, coloring the energetic rhythms that keep you moving all while being entranced by the soulful and poetic lyrics that seem to be channeled by your own subconscious.
Margot & The Nuclear So & So's here at The Drunken Unicorn on Thursday, October 13th, 2011
Margot & the nuclear so and so’s third album Buzzard is primal and truculent, going straight for the vitals. Opener “Birds” finds the band going to places they haven’t before – lovely, languid verses progressing into fuzzed out, howling choruses throughout the song’s twists and turns – while still holding to the guitar-based ethos on which the album is founded. “Lunatic, lunatic, lunatic” may be familiar sonic territory for singer/guitarist Richard Edwards, but the (very) dark humor that slowly unveils is something that he has only flirted with (innocently) in the past. “New York City Hotel Blues” and “Claws Off” distill Margot’s music to its essence: melody-driven pop music with teeth, set adrift against Edwards’ surreal and emotional, if slightly twisted lyrical tendencies. Similarly, “I Do” refines the evocative chamber-pop for which the band is known to its most heart-rending fundamentals, supported by simply Richards’ plaintive voice and an acoustic guitar.
And there is, of course, an intriguing path that led Margot towards this evolution in sound, which contrasts the lively optimism of 2008’s Animal! (and/or Not Animal, simultaneously released after contention with former label Epic). Buzzard was recorded over one freezing month last winter in an abandoned movie theater in Chicago’s Ukrainian Village neighborhood. Edwards had taken up residence there after leaving his hometown of Indianapolis, when the house where he and the previous seven members of the band had lived was damaged in a fire last summer. Once settled, he began writing a collection of songs loosely inspired by the 8mm ‘nudie cutie’ films unearthed in the theater’s basement, and the youthful reaction of mixed emotions that the films evoked.
After six months of writing, longtime Margot members Tyler Watkins and Erik Kang joined Edwards in Chicago and the three began to dig into the new material. A cast of local musicians, who had begun to come to the theater to watch weekly screenings of Kamikaze Hearts, soon also joined them. It was against this grainy backdrop that Edwards and Co. recorded the songs with the help of these new friends, including drummer/producer Brian Deck, Tim Rutili (Califone, Red Red Meat), Joe Adamik, Cameron McGill, Katie Todd and Ronnie Kwasman.
Theater seating was cleared away to accommodate the instruments, while a makeshift control room was assembled in the projection perch. As the days went by, a dusky, Bacchic energy started to fill the theater and Buzzard began to take form. Recording took place between the hours of 10pm and 5am, and no artificial light was allowed (as such, three musicians and engineer Neil Strauch broke bones from tripping over cables). Accidents aside, the willful band – live and manic, newly freed from any past constraints – growled their way through the songs and infused them with a raw, forceful energy that Margot had only hinted at in their past recordings. The result is the band’s most immediate studio recording: bigger and louder than ever before, finally capturing Margot’s powerful, captivating live show and defiantly Midwestern sound.
Dylan Rau started Bear Hands to spite a romantic rival. In disconnecting himself from the love triangle (and successfully copulating with several other humans) he was able to write about 70 new and exciting songs. Joining forces with fellow Wesleyan university alumnus Ted Feldman and iconoclast punk veterans Val Loper and TJ Orscher the band started to stomp live. Both other bands and people in the crowd were stomped regularly and definitively.
Touring became a new way of life for Bear Hands after the 2007 release of their Golden EP. The band opened for MGMT, Vampire Weekend, The XX, Les Savy Fav and spent time on roads all over North America and Europe with now-dear friends Passion Pit, Obits, We Were Promised Jet Packs, Hockey, Manic Street Preachers, and Mayer Hawthorne and The County.
Following the success of their most-recent single "What A Drag" (Too Pure (UK) // Cantora US) Bear Hands delighted weekend warrior crowds at such iconic festivals as Reading, Leeds, Siren, Rockness, and Forecastle. They did shows in Brazil with fellow Brooklynites Chairlift and Telepathe, narrowly escaping with their lives and intestinal parasites.
And now things are really starting to get heavy for Bear Hands. Their debut LP, Burning Bush Supper Club, took over a year to finish, slowed to a crawl by mental illness, intraband resentment, and a generally pervasive sense of indecision. Produced before the watchful eyes of frenemies and industry fat cats alike, Burning Bush Supper Club sees Bear Hands reach unprecedented levels of both truth and relevance. The songs are beautiful and new.
