screams, whispers and songs from planet earth

Tag: Los Angeles

Introducing… We Are The West

Here’s something absolutely stunning for you tonight. We Are The West are the Los Angeles-based acoustic guitar and upright bass duo of John Kibler and Brett Hool. They record and perform in “natural places” to, in their words, “use sound and space to create an experience that is welcoming and honest.” Their mission to bring their music into common (and uncommon) places has meant gigs in shipping containers and storm drains, sheep farms and abandoned convents… and they have a “residency” (so to speak) in an underground parking garage of a Santa Monica office building on the Saturday night before every full moon. The just recently released their second EP installment of a four-part album, entitled We Are The West II (listen below). It was recorded in a Western New York barn, which is probably one of the more conventional place they’ve played.

As the full moon is just around the corner, so is their next gig. They’ll be performing at The Parking Garage beneath the Office Building on the corner of 7th Street and Santa Monica Boulevard this coming Saturday, June 15, with a very special guest, New Zealand songwriter Greg Johnson. And it seems they’re playing an actual venue on June 19 — The Orpheum Theater in Flagstaff, Arizona with Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers. That should be an unusual experience for them.

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The Radar Brothers release “Eight” & Show @ the Echo in L.A. tonight!

The awesome Los Angeles-based The Radar Brothers just released their new album Eight a few days ago, and they’ve been playing a few ‘release parties’ on the West Coast. Tonight, they’re at the Echo in Los Angeles (with Babies on Acid and Young Unknowns) and well yeah, I’m in Boston, but I’d like to commemorate this anyway.

The music is lovely—pleasantly psychedelic, daydreamy, wistful, lyrical and in places kinda dark and brooding. What more can one ask for? For the time being, you can listen to the entire thing on the Merge Records site. Oh, and on Friday, Feb. 22, they’re doing an in-store at Fingerprints in Long Beach at 7pm. Awesome record store. Yes, that’s also on the West Coast. C’est la vie.

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Introducing… The Rebel Light

The Rebel Light released their debut self-titled EP back in November. Now based in L.A., the band is comprised of two brothers from Montauk, New York and their “long lost cousin” from Yucaipa, California. In true DIY spirit, the EP was recorded and mixed by the band themselves, with the vocals captured in the bathroom and the drums tracked in a wood shed. They’ve got an exuberant and celebratory sound with lots going on in this 3 song EP (plus radio edit). There’s the pop balladry of “Goodbye Serenade,” the fully orchestrated production of “Wake Up Your Mind,” and somewhere between those two with the Beatlesque “My Heroes Are Dead.”

Have a listen below, and if you like what you hear, give the band a little tip when you download it. You can grab it from bandcamp or noisetrade.

“Goodbye Serenade,” is especially strong, anthemic in its chorus and horn revelry. It achieves a special poignancy when experienced along with their video, which combines brief clips of band members interspersed with a cultural collage of our world’s history, our best and worst moments. I’m not certain of the intention, but it takes a song about a personal relationship to a completely different place with its refrain, “strange days going in circles…” Definitely a band to watch.

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Band Profile: Red Cortez

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Originally known as The Weather Underground, the group formed mid-2004 with singer/guitarist Harley Prechtel-Cortez, bassist Ryan Kirkpatrick, drummer Diego Guerrero and guitarist Sho Bagley. Sho left around the middle of last year, and was replaced by Edmonton native Calvin J. Love. Adding a Canadian to the mix made the band even more diverse, as they already have Guatemalan, Mexican, and Irish ancestry, which comes out at times in beautiful ways, in their sound and subject matter. The new band member, new songs, and inevitable linking to the ’60’s/’70’s leftist group (often as important to journalists as their songs) inspired them to change their name to Red Cortez. Their first show was Nov. 11, for the debut of Indie 103.1’s “Check One Tuesdays” night at the Echoplex, opening for Earlimart and Afternoons (good heavens, what a lineup).

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Label Profile: JAXART Records

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It was one of those odd moments of serendipity. This morning, I was thinking it was high time to begin writing what I’ve been thinking about for nearly a month now – my first “label profile” of a small but wonderful and prolific enterprise out in L.A. called JAXART Records. Since they’ve put out releases by a few of my favorite bands from that astonishing “Silverlake scene” (Rademacher, The Henry Clay People, Mezzanine Owls…), I decided to put on a bit of music to get me in the mood. I plucked out another one of my favorites, “Our Tears Have Wings” by the Monolators. Then I proceed to dig around for some background information. I come across an interesting and informative interview from LAist with JAXART founder Ashley Jex . Reading along, I discover she’s in the Monolators, first joining them on the brilliant “Don’t Dance” album, which has been sitting for a while on my turntable. And that she publishes a blog that I include in my blogroll and regularly frequent, Rock Insider. It was one of those “ohhhhhhhh” moments (stop that chuckling out there; I’m on a computer day and night, so I have short-term memory issues. Sometimes it just takes me a while, ya know?). She’s deeply immersed in L.A.’s local music scene, having done a stint as a KROQ intern, worked at a few indie labels, and even DJ’s and books shows. She started Rock Insider in 2005, and JAXART Records in 2007.

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