The Hippodrome

Sam Rosen, whose rotating live band includes the illustrious Jason Anderson, runs his own label called Truthtone and plays some grungey-glammy-reggae. The Brooklyn native is on a bit of an eastern seaboard tour right now, hitting up schools and making his way toward Bennington on March 15. He also opened for Vampire Weekend at their Bowery CD release in January.

Interestingly, Rosen tried out a “tour EP” strategy for selling some discs. According to his blog, he sold out all the “tour only” records and is considering a release of these on his label. Whatever sells, but tour only releases, hm? I like it.

Audio: Trenchtown

The Cherry Blossoms are a Nashville collective that play free floating folk music that falls somewhere between Akron/Family and Bogs Visionary Orchestra. Beautiful strained harmonies and noisy glasses all saturate their tracks, and while the band hasn’t put out much new material, they are now touring Europe!

From a very outdated website (I’ll post newer information when I get it):

SOUND: Self described as “Middle Tennessee’s finest anarchic post neo-skiffle collective specializing in kazoo-exotica.” The Nashville Scene has at various times portrayed these masters of the floating rhythm as a “shaggy folk collective”; a “sprawling folk band”; and an “unclassifiable, sprawling folk collective” who play “sublime, freewheeling folk.” Off the record, editor Jonathan Marx has called them Nashville’s version of the Shaggs. (They take the comparison as a compliment)

SONGS: Mostly original, including favorites “I’m going steady with Jesus,” “Mighty Mississippi,” The Dolphin Song,” “New Wave Irish Love Song,” and “Harding Mall.” But they frequently do covers too, ranging from “St Louis Blues” to Ravel’s “Bolero,” Burt Bachrach’s “Casino Royale,” and “Don’t Fear the Reaper” by Blue Oyster Cult.

. . .

Definitely agree with the Shaggs comparison. No pal foot foots here, but some rocking stand up bass and surprisingly good songs to boot.

Audio: Charlie Prim

Elitism for the win, because I’ve found the best social network in the world. ASMALLWORLD is indeed the world’s most exclusive social network and you must be invited to join by someone who was invited by someone else and so on. It’s a close-knit community of close people; so close it almost sounds cult-like, but since I’ve been invited, how would I know? Does this network cater to artists, musicians, entrepreneurs, snobs? Who knows? Oh wait, Wikipedia says that Quentin Tarantino and James Blunt are a part of the site. Awesome!

Have any of you been invited? I’d really like to review this site for real so, invite me please! If you haven’t been invited yet, check out this feature of the site:

“Unlike most other such services, ASMALLWORLD allows users to list multiple cities as their location of residence.”

I feel out.

Kyle Wallace and his team of bloggers over at Analog Scene (and by team I mean me) have found a little tidbit that’s worth repeating here. Downliners Sekt is a Creative Commons licensed band/website that encourages you to share and torrent all their music. Kyle calls it “Radiohead one step further” (without the messy material backlash.)

Although a group making suave electronic beats for free is totally cool, I realize they’re not Radiohead. It’s always good to see polished bands doing this kind of thing, but can we really fault Radiohead for wanting to release some materials with their music?

When I like an artist’s music, I buy the vinyl and go see the artist live. I hope you do the same. I wasn’t a huge fan of In Rainbows, but I don’t blame them for releasing a physical product. We humans like to touch and hold and see without a screen in our faces, so while I still can’t understand why more bands don’t do what Downliners Sekt do, I don’t think the record will ever die.

Despite a nearly unpronounceable moniker, Dustin van Schouwen makes some pretty beautiful textures under the name Ometotchtli. His name is from the Aztec Deity, but I’d be surprised if either “Mptt” or “Ymjj” was the god of anything substantial.

Van Schouwen attends Syracuse University and makes his sound using granular synthesis. A Gretsch G120 is his standby synthesizer. You can download four tracks of his here.

 Audio: W90ty09uw