No Pain In Pop

Thys N Mash

Coming up for air from beneath the suffocated AM transmissions of Ariel Pink, Haunted Graffiti guitarist Cole Train’s solo works with The Samps gleam with infinite sonic clarity. After the mighty ‘TrainCUMMINGS a Litl More’ was cast with such ruvid ease, ‘Mashed Skins’ and ‘Magnetic Thys’ hurtle us on to the secret level at odyssey’s end, replenished to full health and triple gunning for boss blood; flooding out to explore every avenue your ears are unwilling to offer up with the erraticism of the later, greater Jay Dee and the low-slung gambol of Flying Lotus. Such comparisons offer nothing in the way of clues - why depend on words plucked from wet air when you can just press play and let the weekend’s collisions begin.



MP3: The Samps - Mashed Skins



MP3: The Samps - Magnetic Thys

Tags: cole train, haunted graffiti, the samps

Archivist #1: Eddie Palmieri

Eddie Palmieri’s been busting out his sweltering Latin jazz jams for over half a century. In that time he’s been showered with a ton of awards, but with roots music like his it’s probably more telling to go back to the source than to wallow in the glorious extrapolations. Born in New York’s Spanish Harlem in 1936, Palmieri’s percussive pianism was his route out of the Puerto Rican Barrio, the keen rhythms of his various bands and orchestras underpinning a lightness of touch like the fine momentum of limbering through a new city at dusk, dying sunlight inching into odd corners and colonnades on some earth-bound missionary flex.



MP3: Eddie Palmieri - My Spiritual Indian



MP3: Eddie Palmieri - Que Suene La Orquesta

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Tags: eddie palmieri, latin jazz, nu yorica, soul jazz

Concrète Catacomb

Rusty relics pulled from the depths, Dirty Beaches’ bruised beats chime like some deadened lullabies calling out from inside a canyon. Close to the desolate forest fluster of Arch M, Taiwan/Hawaii/Toronto/Montreal native Alex Zhang Hungtai’s coarse concrète samples are biting blocks, like some ‘gull sticking its beak in on Yellow Swans’ rotting carcass. Released via Fixture (Omon Ra, Postcards) Hungtai’s otherworldly follow-up to Old Blood, Horror, suitably picks away at the senses like a baby porpoise pining at you from an oil slick stricken shore.



MP3: Dirty Beaches - In Dreams

Tags: concrète, dirty beaches, fixture records

The Weather, Man

We’ve been away awhile, I know, but waking up this morning to the cascades of water sleighing gleefully down the tarmac hill outside my bedroom window presents a hook too sharp not to hang this prime slab of punk meat upon. Seattle’s Talbot Tagora are three – Mark Greshowak and Chris Ando man guitars, Ani Ricci reins in with drums – and ‘The Weather Man’ is sodden gutter-grunge, vocals heckling guitars that give about as much of a fuck as Ben Willis’s waders.



MP3: Talbot Tagora - The Weather Man



MP3: Panda Bear - I’m Not (phaseone remix)

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Tags: gutter-grunge, panda bear, phaseone, talbot tagora

Give Dublab yr $$$

The unparalleled excellents at Dublab need your help to keep broadcasting. The online guardians of future roots music are six days into a live on-air fundraiser that’ll try to capture your donations ’til the 19th of November. Listen to their Positive Projection Proton Drive here, give here as they try to ring the bell for $18,000, a figure that’ll keep them going for four months. The idea may seem slightly absurd when 99.999 per cent of what you listen to is free, but if anyone deserves to profit from what the internet’s done for the distribution of ideas and recorded sound it’s Dublab - they just played Valerio Cosi and Sun Ra back to back, for example, and then switched to Phyllis Dillon’s version of ‘Love the One You’re With’. They’re offering all sorts of treasure for those flush enough to give over $50, too. If you’re not, think of it in karmic terms if it helps offset the pain of an absent $5.

Tags: dublab, positive projection proton drive

RIP: All Hallows

31/10/08
El Guincho, The XX, The Big Pink, A Grave With No Name + Tomb Crew, Tapedeck, Mumdance, NPIP DJs
@ Goldsmiths Student Union, New Cross
(No Pain In Pop)

All photography by Louis Hartnoll, though evidence of the stage invasion exists at the Discoteca Oceano ‘blog. Babelfish Translation reckons the poster there (Felix Ruiz III, I think) thought, “The concert in himself was perfect. Stage invation of which they mark time with gachi extinguishing all the soundsystem. The songs sounded MASSIVE. Power, dances, PA. PA.PA. PA. PA. PA POPE PAPAPAPAPA.”

In this instance, we simply can’t disagree.

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Tags: a grave with no name, el guincho, hallowe'en, party, the big pink, the xx