The Hippodrome

Honestly, I don’t understand why more people haven’t picked up on Motel Motel’s debut EP Old York yet. This band is one of Brooklyn’s best kept secrets, rocking anthemic go-for-the-throat hooks with timeless country twang, like Wolf Parade tearing apart a dirty old honky-tonk. Sure, they’re a young band, they’ve been together for less than two years, and half of them are still in college. But in this new-fangled internet age, with bands like Black Kids and Vampire Weekend going indie-supernova on the strength of four-song demo CD-Rs, it’s kinda surprising how far under the radar these guys have stayed.

With the upcoming release of their first full-length, New Denver, I doubt Motel Motel will be staying under the radar for much longer. Now they’ve added some delicate strings to the mix, giving their new songs a greater sense of elegance and grandeur without losing any of the drunken confidence and cocaine swagger that made Old York so damn awesome.

“Virginia Kids” starts soft and slow, with singer Eric Engel crooning like a country gentleman with three-day stubble and a loosened necktie. Then over the next seven minutes it gains momentum, builds to a climax, crashes, subsides, builds again, and finally dissipates into nothing, like one of those long songs from the middle section of Modest Mouse’s The Moon and Antarctica.

“Pedal Steel” is a more reserved number, with a long, sinuous melody winding around a gentle shuffle and cascades of strings that sound like they were lifted from a 1930s Hollywood musical. Once again, Engel’s raspy vocal stands front and center, as he sings about panoramic American landscapes with a world-weariness that makes it hard to believe he was studying psychology at the New School less than a year ago.

“Mexico,” the final track off Old York, is a breezy country-rock number that channels pretty much everything that’s cool about the Grateful Dead and features one of the most infectious choruses of 2007. Turn it up loud, roll the windows down, and drive west into the sunset. And just try not to sing along. I dare you.

Audio: Virginia Kids
Audio: Pedal Steel
Audio: Mexico

Passion Pit are from Cambridge, MA, and for an unsigned band, they’ve hit some good circuits. They’ve played with Girl Talk in New Haven, hit up the Great Scott in Allston, and it’s not hard to see why. The band has just released Chunk of Change, which is the creation of Michael Angelakos, the main man with the plan. Passion Pit was nominated last March in the 2008 Best Music Poll in Boston, and lo and behold, they won!

A few months ago, Basstown interviewed these guys about their local buzz. Angelakos, in true local-hero-gone-pro bashful form, said that the buzz made him “horrified,” at least initially. “I didnt expect it,
he said, “I get horrible stage fright too, I think the local scene expects so much but we will warmly embrace it as it has embraced us.”

Sleepyhead, off Pretty Penny, is a sparkling dance track that enlists the most creative aspects of bands like MGMT in creating its synth and sample based structure. To the untrained this will just be well done “electronica,” but under a few layers, the careful textural deconstruction and reconstruction makes these guys a band to watch.

Audio: Sleepyhead

The Roskinski Quartet is based in Braunschweig, Germany. They play some super relaxed tunes, and have made a music video that’s as charming as it is silly. Make sure to watch for the guitar shake at the end.

The cassette tape revival has been overshadowed by its older brother vinyl, but that hasn’t stopped a dedicated community from springing up in recent years. I had a chance to sit down and talk to Zully Adler, the founder of Goaty Tapes, an L.A. based label that disseminates a variety of drone, ambient, and noise tapes.

While I’m skeptical of any label at all, I learned about a distribution method that returns the focus to the whole package itself, just like vinyl. The difference of course is that tapes are way cheaper, which allows a flexibility and DIY ethic that Adler’s label takes to the extreme. No tape gurus are making any real dough, but the model may be as close to the holistic goodness of the old days as anything around today.

The Hippodrome: Thanks for sitting down and chatting! So, how about a quick run down on the process. How do you make your tapes?

Zully Adler: The cool thing with tapes is that everybody kind of develops their own way of putting it all together. Most of us buy tapes cut to the length of time that best fits the material. Some hardcore types like to recycle pre-used shells and reels. The dubbing process just depends on what kind of gear you have. I have a 16speed 1 to 3 duplicator, which is pretty nice. Some people use fast 1 to 1s, or even just two cassette decks, as has been the dubbing tradition.

As far as cover art goes, I like to print mine nicely. Quality paper, colors, gadgets etc. Some don’t really care as much about the artwork as I do. So it really depends on the personality of the label. Spray paint vs. printing, simple j-cards vs. fold-out, etc, you know?

HD: Totally. When did you get interested in all this, and when did Goaty Tapes begin?

ZA: Well, I started Goaty Tapes in my senior year of high school. It was going to be a musical outlet for me and my close friends, as well as a way for me to be creative with design, but I started incorporating artists I liked and people I met along the way. My interest in artists who were releasing cassette-only material started when I was around 14.

To be honest, at first I was kind of annoyed with the format. But I quickly began to appreciate the aesthetic element. You have all these extra surfaces to work with artistically and tapes are thick, substantially tangible objects, which for some reason really augments their appeal. Although music is the primary purpose of the cassette community, design and packaging play a crucial role. I like that. I wouldn’t want the music to be displaced or under-appreciated because these other artistic elements have been added, but finding a compromise is what I think we’re all going for. Everybody wants to be involved, on any level, and I think the community responds well to that. That’s why homies who run labels and distros and artists who contribute exclusively through their visual art are essential members.

HD: One of things that interests me most about tape labels is the way it returns to the pre-internet notion of the recording and packaging as a complete piece of art. I’ve also seen that idea to some extent in cd-rs… do you see a correlation?

ZA: Yeah, tapes and cd-rs definitely go hand-in-hand. There are some tape-only and cd-r-only labels out there, but I think that the two have been pretty much fully interconnected. I like tapes for certain types of music and enjoy their hands-on quality; sometimes cd-rs feel a little flimsy and unsubstantial, but others like cd-rs much more than cassettes, I’m guessing for utilitarian reasons. I’m totally cool with that. When done right, both formats work well and nobody really has any prejudices.

HD: How do you see tapes fitting into the overall music industry?

ZA: You know, sometimes I really make the mistake of viewing the cassette community as an entirely isolated enclave of music-lovers, but when it comes down to it, there are definitely connections with the larger music industry. Plenty of artists start out releasing cassettes and are eventually picked up with larger, more influential labels. The best part is that artists like Wolf Eyes release internationally on large imprints and still maintain a solid presence on the DIY circuit. It’s really a testament to the fact that people are in this scene for the fun of it.

There is, of course, the whole issue with how the industry is dying, and fast. A lot of people see DIY communities like this one as a more sustainable approach to releasing music. That is: keep your day job and make music on a local level in your free time.

HD: Right, and I think it has a humbling effect on the people who believe their attitudes as “rock stars” are what’s going to get them rich and famous.

ZA: Yeah, I agree with that to a certain extent. I think people will always find a way to continue getting their music out there. As for this particular scene, who knows how long it will last… many people argue that the experimental tape-trading community has been around since cassettes were first manufactured. That’s definitely true, but I think what we have now is a relatively new incarnation, a more defined, widespread phenomenon. And this particular scene can’t last forever, but at this point it’s definitely going strong, so we’ll see what happens.

Everybody loves vinyl. It’s the ultimate format, but it’s expensive. I’m sure if all of us could, we would be releasing vinyl left and right, but as it is, most of us don’t have the dollar bills. The most prominent labels in this community, however, have been releasing vinyl increasingly. Not Not Fun and Arbor are going vinyl-crazy, and it totally rules. There are also plenty of very vinyl-only labels that have been largely incorporated into the tape scene. See, this community isn’t really medium-based. So long as everybody has an open mind and maintains their focus on new and exciting material, we all pretty much get along.

HD: Where do you see Goaty Tapes going in the future?

ZA: Goaty Tapes is going to keep a strict focus on a select number of releases by my closest friends and the artists I love the most. I put quality way, way above quantity. Starting pretty soon, the packaging is going to become even crazier and more intricate. I’m also developing a vinyl sister-label called Jelly Hive Records, which should drop its first double LP in the fall, as well as a publishing house. I want Goaty and its associated branches to really encapsulate my personal artistic outlook. Why else run a label? To make money? No no, never gonna happen. For me, the best part is exploring and cultivating your own personality.

A few months ago, the Hippodrome ran our first exclusive feature on Red Sails, posting two songs heretofore unavailable anywhere else. Ben speculated that “maybe if he played his cards right each release will be up on The Hippodrome.” Well, we’re two for two so far, as the Brooklyn four-piece has offered us their latest singles, Tides/Ten Days of Sunlight.

Red Sails’ first release with their current lineup, River Gods/Weathervane, channelled a spacier and less schizophrenic Man Man, or, as Ben put it, “a three headed version of Tom Waits” (whatever that means). While it’s pretty pointless to look for a career trajectory over the course of a pair of two-song releases, it’s hard to ignore the sense of growth and development in these nine minutes and three seconds of music.

“Tides” exhibits the band’s extroverted side, plodding along with tight, angular drumwork washed over with shimmering guitars. With all the crescendos and time-signature changes, they would almost sound like a different band if not for the anchor of Tom Tierney’s howling vocals, which somehow sound both breathless and restrained.

However, they really hit their stride on “Ten Days of Sunlight,” which shows the band turning inward with a beautifully sparse acoustic number that delves fully into the New Weird America they flirted with on River Gods/Weathervane. A sun-kissed melody and unassumingly psychedelic lyrics (”I can smell the colors / bursting with melodies we learned from the leaves”) rest over a gentle acoustic strum and a bed of ambient electronic textures. This song could be the perfect soundtrack to an afternoon in the park with a loved one and a bag of mushrooms.

Red Sails’ next single, Smithereens/Hair and Teeth, is currently in the oven, and if current trends continue, it will probably be released within the next few months. If they keep sending ‘em, we’ll keep posting ‘em.

Audio: Tides
Audio: Ten Days of Sunlight