The Hippodrome

The Jack and Jills could be described as a band in flux. Born from the ashes of previous ensembles, the band spends its time jockeying between New York and St. Louis, installing new members to replace those who will spend the summer elsewhere. Add to this the band’s animated on-stage bobbing and the reciprocal head nods and toe taps they elicit from their audience, and movement and variation are the name of the Jack and Jills’ game.

It’s easy to attribute the band’s animation to youthful innocence—the band is only four months old and several of its members are too young to gain admittance to any 21+ show that’s not their own—but their exuberance is tempered, or perhaps informed, by a surprising knowledge of what else is out there, name-checking Sunset Rubdown and Kurt Rosenwinkel with equal ease.

The band’s frontman, Erick Lee, credits his savvy in part to the breadth and depth of music now available online, saying, “My favorite thing going in the music industry right now is the expansion of consumer choice. The major labels are losing their influence to the internet and people are starting to hear a lot more stuff…The result is more people that really enjoy music and more exposure for lesser known bands.”

So perhaps it’s best to stave off temptation and skip the comparisons, and say simply that the Jack and Jills track Old Ears is available for download here, free of charge.

Audio: Old Ears

Dinowalrus is a band that somehow lives up to its name. A three piece, their music finds freshness in its combination of 80s rock, punk, and drone, which is fairly astounding considering their locale, Brooklyn. To keep it even fresher, the band drastically mixes up instrumentation live.

DW uses all the fun new stuff (sampler, Theremin, etc.) in their tunes pretty convincingly, and reports their ownership of a “1983 Roland analogue synth named ‘Marc Bolan’”. The band has played with some underground hotshots; Titus Andronicus, Michael Jordan, and Ringo Deathstarr to name just a few.

They’ve also landed a show with Ponytail this Saturday at the Music Hall in Williamsburg, as a part of the After The Jump Festival.

Audio: Duke Nuke ‘Em
Audio: Bead

Lady Lovelace and the Calculator Death Machine, the duo now turned three piece, are about to release their new album Music for Two Musicians. David Kant, singer and multi-instrumentalist, tells me that the new project is “one large piece. So, in that sense, it’s not really an album at all. The album is divided into sections where new ideas emerge and where we thought track breaks would be convenient.”

Performing live, Lady Lovelace is a surprisingly dense experience, showcasing Charysse Redwood’s hard hitting drum beats and percussion behind Kant’s frantic sampling, saxophone playing, and guitar noise. Echoes of free jazz and folk rock are the biggest underlying themes, at least to most ears.

These new recordings are surprisingly similar to the live sound, and they no doubt show a rare attention to detail, which is especially impressive considering the improvisatory nature of the compositions’ formation. The whole album can be streamed on their MySpace, but Parts V and VI can be downloaded here, and only here my friends.

Audio: Part V
Audio: Part VI

Tyler Griffith moved to Queen Creek, Arizona, six years ago, and has been making mostly laid back instrumentals ever since. A bassist by trade, he grabs whatever he get his audio hungry paws on quickest.

Most of Griffith’s tracks are wonderfully postmodern in their self-referential DIY ethic… “Timers” takes the ubiquitous chair creek found in homemade demos and turns it into a fleeting beat. This is even better considering Griffith’s bedroom production tool — Garageband. “Property Ownership” (or P___O) is a super relaxed lounge piece that uses some nice bells, panning, and a false coda to achieve its unpretentiously beautiful effect.

Griffith also has a few interesting videos up on his MySpace, which make sense considering the soundtrack quality of his work.

Audio: Property Ownership
Audio: Timers

Rooftops are a math rock trio heavily influenced by recent Chicago visionaries like Pele and Don Caballero. The band is about to hit the road with The Americas, a Santa Rosa duo that are also looking to make their mark on the west coast. Bellingham, Washington, is the band’s home, and it isn’t a scene to scoff at either; beneath the home town heroes of Death Cab for Cutie lie hearty labels like Estrus Records that have churned out more than a few regional legends.

While Rooftops only have a few demos of recent work available, the band’s chops and groove tactics make them stand out from the crowd. “Robuts” is a rough recording from last year, but it still shows them playing solid instrumentals reminiscent of some of David Longstreth’s earlier music.

Audio: Robuts