Friday, December 23, 2011

Ninetails - Ghost Ride the Whip


Ninetails hails from England and play an interesting blend of rock music's.  Love the name by the way. We get a small idea of what these guys are bringing to the table with this three song EP.  Post rock, indie rock, indie pop, math rock yet pretty vocal driven as well. Structurally these songs are interestingly arranged and its nice to be kept on your toes a bit where each song is going to turn to. HOWEVER some kind of synthesizing would be appreciated as I can see a full length of this sort of strategy getting a bit flim flammy. For a short player it's nice to see a group spreading its feathers and I certainly look forward to more.

Ghost-ride-the-whip bandcamp

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Strange Mangers - S/T (2011)


Kids these days.

Strange Mangers are a new-ish band of teenagers from Boston that includes a heavy dose of jangly guitar in their indie rock brew. The songs tend to be pensive and catchy. The rhythms aren't at all mathy, but there's so much jangly guitar, effective dynamics, and well-placed vocal harmonies that you'll forget everything is in 3/4 and 4/4. The vocals are sparse, airy, and strong.

The one iffy moment is a misguided sample-based piece about the financial crisis in the middle of the EP. It doesn't really add anything and kills the EP's momentum. But thats what skip buttons are for, I suppose.

Stream/download Strange Mangers on their Bandcamp.

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

The Velvet Teen - No Star & Cum Laude


The Velvet Teen are an alt indie group with some rocking gutairs. Most interesting and delighting to me is their drummer Casey (one of my favorites) also drums for The America's
(click the link to time travel)

This group is something of a shape shifter and can sound pretty radically different depending on where you catch them. The No Star EP is a pretty guitar heavy album which is why its one of my fav's.  Also of note is their album Cum Laude which is just straight awesome sauce and has some nasty keyboardage. It's a must have so please Seek and Destroy

Cum Laude

No Star

The Cabs - First Incident


Japanese emo/ indie rock with some math rock flirtations. Some pleasant vocals mixed  screaming. When the tempo slows down these guys seem at a disadvantage but raise the BPM's and suddenly the drums and guitar go all kinds of math wonky.  Its pretty good stuff but I cant say for sure how long it will stay in the rotation. Is it worthy of a look? Hellz Jess.


First Incident

Ninko/ Carved in Clouds- Original Linkzz



Yo. So again, i have been digging through old things that i was working on right as my old computer crapped the bed. Through this digging, i have a few things i want to show to you. First, as a follow-up to Sunrise in Cloud City, the track i wrote to come in immediately after, Trouble Brewing:
Trouble Brewing by ninko

I was talking to Metaghost about this next one; we agree that it was something we jammed on after listening to lots of Toe. We jammed out, and i returned home and recorded all the things i remembered by myself:

king:
King by ninko

Finally! The grand jewel of all halted projects! I have rediscovered a 2 minute clip of the first section of an epic, 12 minute piece called Arcobot. Metaghost and i composed this beast of a song over multiple writing sessions, which we pieced together into a truly epic jam. Our goals were beyond our means though, and the project stalled, but we have the grooves under our belts; it is ready to go. This intro track is one of my funnest guitar creations to date; it is just a melodic, tricky guitar part that took me long hours to master. I hope you like:

Arcobot by ninko

Monday, December 19, 2011

Vasudeva - Roots of The Tree EP


Quartet hailing from Brooklyn, Vasudeva have dropped a pretty rollicking EP here with their brand of instrumental tap happy math rock. The drums keep things driving along at a pretty nice clip not to mention a pretty varied attack. The guitars actually launch into some fairly memorable melodies (sometimes not often enough). If what your reading sounds like something you've heard before...chances are your not to far off. Believe me when I say though that its worth a listen. Perhaps with some more structural twists and turns it could be elevated to another level of awesome.

Roots of The Tree (EP)