‘Ezra Furman says new single “Book of Our Names” is “what it feels like to live together under an empire that doesn’t value your lives. I sing it as a Jew and as a trans woman, knowing well the stakes and consequences of being part of a hated population. But it is a protest song intended for use by any movement for collective survival and freedom.’
‘King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard made their biggest zag yet with last year’s Butterfly 3000 which found the tripped-out, microtonal-loving Aussie psych band successfully exploring danceable pop music. It makes sense then, that they’d farm out the record for remixes. As someone who was into dance music and indie/alt in the ’90s, I am a fan of remixes and still own many CD singles of wild Andrew Weatherall, Terry Farley, Todd Terry and Fred Falke reworks of Saint Etienne, Bjork, etc. Butterfly 3001 is very much in that spirit and there’s a lot of great stuff here.’
“In awesome late-’90s style, DJ Shadow grabs hold of one line from King Gizzard’s original and turns it into an entirely new, banging club track full of breakbeats, killer basslines and lots of turntablism. The remix also comes with great music video made by John Angus Stewart that stars Australian radio DJ, humorist, and filmmaker John Safran as an aging club kid who is past his prime but still goes hard. It’s one of those videos, like Spike Jonze’s video for Fatboy Slim’s “Praise You,” that make the song better.”
‘King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard are releasing a remix album, titled Butterfly 3001, which will be out January 24 via KGLW. It features remixes and reworks of songs from this year’s Butterfly 3000 by DJ Shadow, The Flaming Lips, DāM-FunK, Geneva Jacuzzi, Peaches, Peaking Lights, Confidence Man, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, and more.’
‘One of the most prolific artists of the last decade, rivalling the output of Oh Sees and Robert Pollard, Ty Segall emerged from a two-year hibernation earlier this month, surprising the world with Harmonizer which he released to the world with no advance notice.’
‘Because it’s been almost three months since they released a new album, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard have announced they’ll be back with Butterfly 3000 on June 11 via their own KGLW label. It’ll be their 18th album and according to the press release it’s a suite of 10 songs that “all began life as arpeggiated loops composed on modular synthesisers” before being fleshed out and transformed by the six-piece band. The band describe this one as “melodic + psychedelic.”
‘LA based Australian artist Jess Cornelius released Distance last year and she’s now shared an alternate version of that album’s “Body Memory.” “I’d started playing the song for myself in a totally different way – on echoey guitar instead of keys, with a dreamy, melancholic mood, and wanted to record it as a sort of ‘part two’,” says Jess.’
“King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard’s 17th album, L.W., is out Friday and you can stream it now because it’s already Friday in Australia and the band have flipped the switch on their Bandcamp. This is third album in their “microtonal” series (that includes 2020’s K.G. and 2017’s Flying Mictrotonal Banana) that explores “the notes between the notes.” The record ranges from psychedelic folk to doomy heaviness.”
“King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard have made it official — thier 17th album is titled L.W. and it will be out digitally next week (Feb 26) via Flightless, with physical editions out in the spring. The band are calling it a companion piece to last year’s K.G. and an extension of the musical explorations of the “notes between the notes” first heard on 2017’s Flying Mictrotonal Banana.”
“Ty Segall’s proto-metal-style power trio Fuzz were supposed to be on tour right now supporting their third album, including two February shows in NYC. Those dates, which had already been postponed from the summer, have been postponed again, but to tide you over they’ve taped a short live set at Gold Diggers Studio 1 in Los Angeles and have shared it with the world.”
“Prolific Australians King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard just released their 16th album K.G. so it should be no surprise that they’re already back with something new. After a drawn-out rock intro, “If Not Now, Then When?” turns out to be another left turn for a band full of them, a lithe track with funky clavinet/electric piano and falsetto vocals.”
“Fuzz is a great name for a power trio, and Ty Segall (drums, vocals), Charles Moothart (guitar, vocals) and Chad Ubovich (bass, vocals) mostly make good on its promise, delivering awesomely heavy psychedelic rock with dexterity and melody…”
“Australia’s King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard have announced new album K.G., which is their 16th album in the group’s 10-year existence and will be out November 20 independently. It’s the second volume in their “microtonal” series that began with 2017’s Flying Microtonal Banana and contains this year’s “Honey,” “Straws in the Wind” and “Some of Us”.”
“Fuzz, the trio of Ty Segall (drums, vocals), Charles Moothart (guitar, vocals), and Chad Ubovich (bass, vocals), release their third album on Friday and ahead of that they’ve just shared the video for “Mirror.””
…Ty Segall’s Fuzz share animated “Spit” video from Albini-recorded new album”‘Spit’ was written early in the process of working on III,” says Moonhart. “When Ty and I first started working on this song, we didn’t know if it was even going to be a FUZZ song or not. We wanted to make a song that felt straight forward, but had a subtle tweak that over time gets more obvious. The verse riff almost feels like you’re falling asleep at the wheel then the chorus opens up with a melodic, but sharp riff that adds to the punch-drunk feeling of the verse.”
The wildly prolific Oh Sees haven’t released an album since August (the jazzy Face Stabber) so they are probably due for an announcement sooner than later. In the meantime, they’ve announced a North American tour which will have them out with Mr. Elevator in September. Dates kick off with two nights in San Francisco and include stops Portland, Seattle, Chicago, Cleveland, Toronto, Providence, NYC, Philadelphia, Carrboro, Atlanta, Austin and Albuquerque.
Fuzz – the hard rock trio of Ty Segall (drums, vocals), Charles Moothart (guitar, vocals), and Chad Ubovich (bass, vocals) – haven’t toured or released new material in quite a while, but they’ve just announced a 2020 North American tour, marking their first in five years. The tour includes two NYC shows and a three-night run in Los Angeles, along with other stops in Chicago, Philly, Seattle, Cambridge, Portland, Toronto, Baltimore, Vancouver, San Francisco, and lots more.
The NYC shows happen at Bowery Ballroom on June 24 (tickets) and Music Hall of Williamsburg on June 25 (tickets). Tickets for those dates (and the whole tour) go on sale this Friday (1/31) at 11 AM ET. All dates are listed below.
The reunited Bikini Kill have been rolling out 2020 tour dates, and now they’ve added even more, including Oakland, CA’s Burger Boogaloo in July, and shows at Brooklyn’s Prospect Park for BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival on August 4, Morrison, CO’s Red Rocks Amphitheater on October 21. Tickets for Prospect Park, and all the new dates, go on sale Friday December 13 at noon, with a fan presale starting Wednesday December 12 at noon; the password for that will be available via the band’s newsletter.
This week: orchestral synthpop fireworks from Anna Meredith; synthpop synthpop from Black Marble; High Llamas main man Sean O’Hagan goes solo and brings an old Microdisney bandmate along; Mikal Cronin undergoes trial by fire on his first solo album in four years; and San Francisco’s The Gonks do twee punk right.
For more reviews on new album, check out Andrew’s Notable Releases, and other records out today I liked (but didn’t review) include: Young Guv’s GUV II, Guided by Voices’ Sweating the Plague, and UK band Dry Cleaning’s second EP of 2019. And if you need more Basement-approved stuff there’s: Wire are back with a new album; The Orielles announced their second album; and Taos duo Tan Cologne are better than their name.
Oh Sees have made a video for “Captain Loosely” which is from their upcoming album, Face Stabber (which is out next week). The video was directed by Matt Yoka and shot on the U.S./Mexico border in Texas, and they’ve dedicated it to the victims of the August 3 El Paso mass shooting.
Bikini Kill are in the midst of a four-show in NYC, part of their reunion tour; they played their first proper NYC show in over 20 years (other than a brief surprise 2017 reunion at The Kitchen) on Friday (5/30) at Brooklyn Steel, and second on Saturday at Terminal 5. The third show of the run happened Tuesday night (6/3) at Kings Theatre, where Bikini Kill invited a special guest to the stage: Joan Jett, who played guitar on “Rebel Girl” (the single version of which Joan produced and contributed guitar and backing vocals to). Watch that happen below.
Ezra Furman is back with a new album Twelve Nudes, which will be out August 30 via Bella Union. For it he worked with in-demand producer John Congleton and Ezra calls it a “spiritually queer” punk record and “a slice of pure agitated rage.” You can hear what Ezra means on the “freaked-out banger” of a first single. “Desperate times make for desperate songs,” says Furman. “I wrote this in the summer of 2018, a terrible time. It’s the sound of me struggling to admit that I’m not okay with the current state of human civilization, in which bad men crush us into submission. Once you admit how bad it feels to live in a broken society, you can start to resist it, and imagine a better one.” Watch the animated video for “Calm Down AKA I Should Not Be Alone,” made by Beth Jeans Houghton, below.
Ty Segall and The Freedom Band has announced multi-night residencies in Los Angeles, NYC, Paris, London, and Haarlem, NL where they will play select albums in full, including Melted, Goodbye Bread, Emotional Mugger and Manipulator. (There will be an additional set at these shows where they’ll play “???” still to be announced.) There are 10 Los Angeles shows (Teragram Ballroom on July 26, August 2, 9, 16, 23, 30, September 13, 20 & 27) and five NYC shows (Warsaw on October 1-5).
