Tape Op has posted a new episode of their DISCussion podcast series. They get on the phone with an artist or producer to discuss an album they love. In episode 41 producer and audio engineer Mario J. McNulty talks about Massive Attack's Mezzanine album.
Four tracks recorded in Manchester over two nights in April 2014 by adventurous jazz outfit Snarky Puppy will be released for Record Store Day (April 20). Live At The Band On The Wall captures the band in full flight. A double album would make more sense, but it is a nice start. 2000 copies worldwide.
Snarky Puppy:
Michael League: bass
Robert "Sput" Searight: drums
Nate Werth: percussion
Bob Lanzetti: guitar
Bill Laurance: keyboards
Cory Henry: keyboards
Justin Stanton: keyboards & trumpet
Mike 'Maz' Maher: trumpet & flugelhorn
Chris Bullock: saxophone
Darren Smallman returns to his country of origin in June, playing four shows in Australia with his one-man garage-punk band Dez Dare to promote his latest album Billion Goats. A Billion Sparks. Fin album: "a rollercoaster ride without any of the nasty side-effects (nauseau, dizziness and the like). He is shouting at the heavens, calling in physics as well as science-fiction to make sense of it all. It is an album that is bursting at the seems with fuzz and reverb, and it sounds like it might fall apart at any second. Smallman is walking the thin line between structured mayhem and chaos, but it is worth the risk. The best art offers a challenge for both the artist and the public".
English quirky pop act Dirty Nice is still a duo, but they will a sextet when they hit the road in May for their first UK headline tour. Their new single Like Best Friends will likely be a highlight of their set, a tongue-in-cheek plea to a girl to consider becoming best friends, like monkees in a zoo.
Charlie Pelling and Mark Thompson keep it simple, but brutally honest: "Goddamn // You're funny // So cool // So sunny". Add a few choice breaks and tempo changes, and presto: a recipe for a proper dance floor banger. They make it sound so easy, but it is damn hard to replicate.
On May 31 the fifth installment of the official series of CAN live bootleg recordings Live In Aston 1977 will be released on via Spoon Records (LP, 2CD, digital) and distributed via Mute. It captures the band in transistion, with Rosko Gee as the new guy on bass. The German inventors were keen improvisers and during concerts by the Krautrock ensemble anything could happen.
Live in Aston 1977 is a whole new lens through which we can view a unique band with seemingly inexhaustible energy for live performance. It comes at a difficult period for Can; their recently released eighth studio album, Saw Delight, had been badly received and although posterity has been kinder, the reviews on release were savage. It might be expected that the live performances from this time would reflect some of the criticisms of the album, that they were slowing down, perhaps even feeling a little jaded, but it cements the notion that Can live, at any period, was mercurial.
