CYP2: Light Asylum, Chelsea Wolfe, Tearist, Violet Tremors

Photos by Zell Thomas | Review by Aneesah Moore

It was a dark night full of drum machines, synthesizers fog and dance beats that would carry you on its wing till the break of dawn. On Tuesday May 15, 2012 tons of kids congregated to watch captivating sets full of electric energy by Violet Tremors, Tearist, Chelsea Wolfe and Light Asylum. Slow Motion got the crowd warmed up before and in between acts with DJ sets full of dance, house and electronic synth music. 

Violet Tremors, a two-piece group from Los Angeles consisting of friends Jessica White and Lorene Simpson, opened up the night and got the crowd started with a set of dark minimal synth. Their set made me feel like a goth kid in the 80's and then it made me think, "were there goth kids in the 80's?" Of course there were, if there weren't, The Cure would've had a hard time getting popular (or not). These ladies were very retro, had outfits to match their sound and knew how to deliver to the onlooking audience.

Following Violet Tremors was Yasime Kitties and No Age's William Strangeland that made up the two-piece from Los Angeles called Tearist. Delivering a set full of shattering synth, scrapping metal while Yasmine sang, roared, murmured and hummed over the electronic sounds. I felt intrigued by their presence and could feel the chaos that came along with their music. Though it felt chaotic, it maintained structure that only contained unlimited boundaries of its own.

Shortly after, Chelsea Wolfe took the stage and opened up with, "Movie Screen". She seemed like a fallen angel in distress and was standing before us, expressing herself in the most dark and heavenly way possible. Wolfe's music is so hauntingly chilling, mesmerizing and heartfelt that you begin a deep fall into her harmony.  A harmony that is so melodious and dark that it seems effortlessly organic to Chelsea Wolfe as an artist. 

In the middle of her set, she mentions how she had just gotten back from touring Europe, and how happy it is to be back in the states where she has fans and thanked everyone for supporting her throughout the years. Chelsea then went on to sing new material, leaving you with a sense of spiritual awe. Definitely doom-folk at it's best.

Headliner's, Light Asylum ended the night with sounds infused with tons of synth and drum machines. With so much fog encompassing lead singer Shannon Fuchess. It took awhile for me to make her out of it, but why bother with that, instead I let myself get lost in a synthesizer trance. They brought the beats, the funk, a great crowd and the fog.

By the end, I don't think I saw one person leave disappointed, but why would they? It was a night full of epic music and an extra dose of good times.

View photos of the show HERE.

Girl In A Coma at Alex's Bar

Photos & Review by Suzette Gomez & Jonathan Nezzer

For those of you who may not know, Alex’s Bar in Long Beach, California is a special kind of dive. Many bands have passed through their doors and wailed their hearts out to the crowd, and it has quite the fierce following. On this particular April night, not one, but two bands from San Antonio graced the stage, and set the tone for the remainder of a wild evening. Piñata Protest, a self-described “…accordion powered punk rock-y-roll band” that makes “Punk like abuela used to,” powered the audience into a barely containable excitement with their mash up of punk and Norteño to create a very uniquely energizing sound was the perfect band to open for the ladies from San Antonio, Girl in a Coma.

Riding on the energy of the Protest, Nina, Phanie, and Jenn opened with “One Eyed Fool,” the second track from their newest album, “Exits and all the Rest.” The opening bass line is unique among the newest iteration of their direction as a band, harkening back to their earlier albums. The night quickly progressed as they mashed older and newer tracks together to create a very different style of play than other live performances, most notably by blending in songs that they typically reserve for an encore (which always happens,) into the set. The powerhouse song of the night was “Si Una Vez,” a Selena cover from their album “Adventures in Coverland.” This song is always a guaranteed hell raiser, which is nothing but encouraged to do in Alex’s Bar and blended perfectly with the punk inspired Tex-Mex sounds of two of the three bands there. While their newest album is most definitely mellower in sound and tempo, that does not change the fact that when they play, they have an unmistakable quality that revs the engines of the audience. Maybe it is the blend of Norteño and punk, or that Nina switches over to a twelve string guitar for a few sets, or that her sister Phanie gets so into it that she kicks over her tom-tom in excitement, or the looks of angry passion that Jenn has as she backs up with vocals and bass. Whichever way you look at it, the answer is pretty simple; these girls love to play and want the audience to feel that to their core.

At the end of the night for the encore set, Nina slowed down the tempo of the night with “Simple Man,” a lone track that has a hypnotic effect upon the listener as Nina takes the audience into a personal part of her life. As Jenn and Phanie stepped of the small stage and received quiet accolade as she played, there was a sense of pride that the girls gave off watching Nina giving her solo. After that, they hopped back onstage and gave the audience an adrenaline shot with a closing cover of Velvet Underground’s “Femme Fatale,” which they once again showed the duality of their recorded tracks versus their live performances. The speed and tempo is seemingly organic to the energy received by the audience. A Girl in a Coma performance is a very nuanced style of play that has its own heartbeat as a game of give and take is played between audience and performers, and to have the body be one of their favorite venues leaves little doubt that these girls are far from comatose.

See photos from their show HERE.

LICENSE TO DRIVE - WORK DRUGS (MUSIC VIDEO)

We all remember the first realizations of the possibility of driving without your mom or dad in the car. That feeling of euphoria sent me floating, just like this track.  After hearing this song a couple times it really set in on me. In the video the kid looks amazed and determined at the new found fact that he can drive. The end of the video is just awesome WTF. Work Drugs, a band from Philadelphia created this chilled out track so you can hear SUMMER ringing in your ear all year long. I'm already excited to add this to a mix. Don't forget to check out their other music below.  

WORK DRUGS BAND LINKS:

Main Page

Soundcloud

Tumblr

Bandcamp

Twitter

Post Modern Disco Unicorns

This post has nothing really to do with Unicorns, sadly that is just my imagination but it has everything to do with Rosso Corsa.

Let me paint a picture of how I stumbled into all things Rosso Corsa...

I found myself taking a codeine tablet, not even an especially strong one but the codeine combined with the horrendous hangover I had endured all day after a particularly cheap night out cheekily drinking sips of everybody else’s drinks. (The inventor of straws I Praise You).

I instantly feel nauseous, a side effect of the codeine. I dry heave for about 1 minute and 47 seconds, dry my eyes on some stolenfromwork toilet roll, I always cry when I dry heave, it is not as emotional an affair as it was when I was a teenager. The violent act of yakking in the park after drinking cheap cider was always a terribly upsetting experience.

I then retire to my room, the room is beginning to get a little fuzzy, this feeling was not a nice one. The world didn’t stop spinning after I closed my eyes, but it did become a lot prettier. I started to think about Unicorns, Unicorns and rainbows all very reminiscent of that iphone game but taken to new levels when merged in with Hajime Sorayama’s cosmic sexy robot ladies. Then I switched on the soundtrack to Drive. Post Modern Disco at it’s finest.

It all became suddenly clear….Post Modern Disco Unicorns, that was the way forward, this was the feeling, the look. the aesthetic, the soundtrack to the rest of my life. The only question I had was ….how do I step into my neon and pastel coloured world?

Well I found out how, I stumbled into Rosso Corsa via a healthy dose of Kavinsky...

Rosso Corsa is a  record label that has all my new favourite 80sesque DJs on it such as Miami Nights 1984, Lazerhawk and 80s Stallone.

Check out this radio interview and an awesome mix at the end with Canadian Michael Glover AKA Miami Nights 1984 who is also one of the founders of Rosso Corsa.  He talks about how he got to name a genre called Outrun under the guise ActRazer and moved on into Dreamwave with the first Miami Nights 1984 album.
http://www.controlfreqradio.com/blog/2012/miami-nights-1984

I won’t ramble on any more...everything you need to know is in this wicked radio interview.

I IMPLORE YOU ALL to listen to Miami Nights 1984  remix of Gotye’s “Somebody That You Used to Know” Gotye has allegedly said that there are only two remixes of his song that he likes and this is one of them and check out the Rosso Corsa website

http://rossocorsarecords.com

A Force to be Reckoned With...

Dragonforce

Nearly 6 years on since the original release of “Through the Fire and Flames” made famous as the end credit playable song on Neversoft’s successful third installment franchise of Guitar Hero games;  Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock.  (Incidentally Neversoft are due to go into court in May this year because Axl Miserable Rose is suing them for various incidences of using Slash’s image and some classic Guns and Roses songs from an era before Axl had gone totally mental and the band were still legit as fuk...this according to reputable website Hollywood Reporter!

Anyway I digress...so 6 years on... Does “Through the Fire and Flames” track on English Power Metal band Dragonforce’s third album “Inhuman Rampage”  still deserve accolades for the over the top crazy, frenzied guitar playing porn-noodling for an epic (thoroughly overused word but quite apt in this instance) 7 minutes and 22 seconds and enduring contraversial rumours that the band sped the song up in the studio as evidenced by poor reviews of their live shows.  (The band suggested this was due to technical difficulties with their equipment and on later tours proved all the haters wrong by playing faster than flash gordon after an adrenaline shot intended for sufferers of peanut allergies)

...the answer is simply YES

Madonna Love/Hate

I both simultaneously adore and detest Madonna. To the point it puts me into a spiralling maniacal crisis.  Old Madge was amazing, it's undeniable. Songs like 'Borderline', 'Get into the Groove' and of course 'Like a Prayer' are staples on my Most Excellent All Time Ever YouTube Disco Party Playlist™ (or MEATEYDPP™ for short).

She may not be the technically greatest of singers, but she's provocative and, historically, just an excellent pop factory, churning out hits like a far eastern sweatshop churns out cheap and affordable products for western consumption – we question the ethics and authenticity of it all, but a new pair of Nike Hi-Tops just feel so good.

Used to be Cool

Moving on in the Madgedonna timeline: in 1998, she got all 'William Orbit' about life with that ‘Ray of Light’ album: still liked her, bit different, not quite so saucy, but certainly a different guise. She looked like she might grow older gracefully – I couldn't have been more wrong.

Let's just forget most of the ‘Music’ album, released September 2000. Well, mainly the track ‘Music’ itself, only funny because of Ali G which, let’s face it, dated the actual music video quite quickly (although not for some of my friends, who seem to regularly quote Ali G on an almost daily basis. I want to mention to them that it is a comedy over a decade old, and suggest a small amount of movement with the times, but they are too busy bashing my overuse and addiction to the best-known social networking sites. So, it's all fair I suppose, everyone is a wanker in their own way, each to their own, peace love and understanding and other hippy nonsense).

The Confessions tour was, in the main, amazing, because of the then-24-year-old street dancer Sofia Boutella – a personal fetish, probably clouding any real judgement I have of the entire tour. Let me have a rethink. Okay, subjectively: the tour was separated into four parts – Equestrian, Bedouin, Glam-Punk and Disco. Errr, what could possibly go wrong? Hanging from a giant mirrored cross, wearing a Swarovski crystal-encrusted crown of thorns (I am not 100% sure if the Swarovski bit is factual, but she did have a $2million disco ball encrusted with the fancy Austrian cut glass, so I am just assuming they had a few chips left over for some controversial headwear), which obviously upset the children of all the people who got upset about her shagging a black Jesus in the ‘Like a Prayer’ video, way back in 1989.  If religion ain't your thang, she also whipped out a rhythm guitar and banged out a few riffs, and that alone was just disturbing and controversial.

The Confessions tour was also the start of the ‘Haggard Madge’ look – her old camel toe and crazy bandy pilates arms coming out to play. A friend of mine went to see the tour in Cardiff,UK and was standing right at the front. When I questioned her whether or not it was actually any good, she said, whilst gesticulating length with her arms outstretched, “I was literally this close to Madonna's labia. I could see every crease.” I just don’t have anything else to say about this.

Okay, so ‘Confessions’ was a mixed bag, and I don’t even want to touch on the ‘Sweet & Sticky’ tour because, with the 2008 album ‘Hard Candy’, she did exactly then (the scary cougar routine chasing Justin Timberlake over parked cars in ‘4 Minutes’) what she is doing now (with her twelfth studio album ‘MDNA’).

From the ridiculous drug-reference title (stay off crack kids) to that god awful Superbowl performance that had me taking non-non-drowsy antihistamine tablets to fall as quickly as possible into a dreamless unconscious to avoid reliving any of that performance in my nightmares. It was like she dragged LMFAO, Minaj and M.I.A. on stage to suck the youth out of them with her vampiric teeth, highlighted by her famous gappy smile.

Luckily, she hid her bedraggled arms on that Indianapolis stage, but alas she did a couple of geriatric cartwheels and I cried myself to an allergy-free sleep.

Youth Sucking Vampire

TAKE ME TONIGHT - HE MET HER

The creative duo He Met Her, out of LA, is made up of the couple, Mowgli Moon & Rocky Chance, such fitting names for musicians. The songs somehow sound like an updated cooler version of some of the pop music I listened to a very long time ago, giving a great nostalgic fun feeling. Some of their songs are electro based while others include hip hop. I love the fact that each song is so diverse and different from the other.  Makes me want to listen all day long. 

Listen to "Take me Tonight":

BAND LINKS

He Met Her

Facebook

Spiriting - Mafia Lights

I seem to be in a rather chill mood today. I think it's the fact that I really hate this gloomy weather and I'm relying on music to give that bit of sunshine or summer feeling. Though the video has them boarding through a landspace I have never seen before. I imagine something more of the image above, on a bicycle, shorts, sunset and not too hot maybe with a slight buzz from the BBQ I'm leaving to head to the bar. Enough of my blah blah blahs, thanks for the tunes Mafia Lights. Stream their EP HERE. 

oh yeah, wtf is 'whalecore'?

Magic - Panama

This morning I was out riding through Long Beach listening to my shuffle. Something I haven't done for a while since the damn thing keeps being a little bitch. All of a sudden I catch myself really enjoying a particular tune. I even put it on repeat before realizing it's something I havent heard in a few weeks (actually a month or so). Panama's single 'Magic' sounded just right for the moment. It made this crapper overcast weather more sunny. With some bass lines adding to the head-bob, a little tropical and a dash of 80's synth, it makes this Sydney-based band sound very Californian (but not that crappy OC emo shit). Then you come to realize, oh shit… it was recorded in LA with Eric Broucek of DFA Records. So check out their video for 'Magic' and I'll get some remixes posted as soon as Soundcloud fixes whatever they're doing.

FRIENDS, HOUSSE DE RACKET, NEON INDIAN SHOW REVIEW

This is the first show I've attended lately to see all of the performers. I was excited to see each performance for the first time. It seemed like most people had arrived for Neon Indian and the answers to my questions into the crowd proved that. There was a packed crowd as always for great bands playing at Echoplex! Also to note, there were more chicks in the crowd than usual for a week night at the Echoplex. 

Brooklyn based Friends were on the stage first. A lot of people had no idea who they were but Samantha (vocals) was very pleased to see a fan at the beginning of the set and gave her a hug. With two pretty girls and bomb beats the crowd stayed and didn't disperse.  A few people in the front were singing the lyrics but honestly they played songs that I can't even find on the internet. I wish I could have recognized more songs because there were two that I enjoyed a lot and were brand new to me. 

Anyway, back to their performance...it was very enjoyable. The singer was moving around a lot, giving looks to the crowd, and really gave that kick to the band. She even came into the crowd and sang to a guy and a few other people. The other band members were awesome too with contributing vocals and the whole band was pretty versatile switching from the keyboard/bass on different songs which you don't really see too often. 

Housse de Racket, out from France and just recently getting big in the United States...I was psyched to see them. I had no idea when they went on stage that it was only going to be two guys! That always throws me off a bit. During the first two songs people in the crowd seemed a little confused as to who this band was. The sound was not lacking though; some songs have not gained as much popularity as others. Once 'Chateau' came on, the crowd seemed to recognize the song and got more into it. Playing their first LA show, HDR didn't know what to expect from the fans as we all know, most people were there for Neon Indian. 'Roman' and 'Chateau' were what got the crowd really excited but it's obvious since they are from the most recent album, Alésia. 'Synthétiseur' sounded better live, could have been all the lights, the slight buzz from the PBR or their energy from the first LA show. 

Check out our upcoming interview from Housse de Racket, coming soon.  

Neon Indian was of course as good as expected! It's great to have a band meet your high expectations! The electric beats were nothing short of amazing and the killer dance moves added on to a great performance. Once Neon Indian started, everyone moved up and was dancing around. A whole lot of dancing toward the front of the stage was expected but lots of dancing was going on in the back near the bar. Their performance made me no longer care about which song they played, I just wanted to get into the music.  There were no fucks given that night, the feet did the talking!

Be sure to check out the photos taken at the show HERE!