E.K. Wimmer is one of my top favorite artists to be featured here at AFIN, and also an all-around nice, cool, multi-talented fellow. His last album, What Was Once Veduta is Now Found was reviewed favorably here in January, as well as the single from this album "Puppets and Ninjas". His incredible new album The Invisible Audience was just released and I got a chance to interview E.K. about it - ...
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E.K. Wimmer - The Invisible Audience + Interview
Julian Casablancas - Phrazes for the Young
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I feel as if I have been waiting for this forever. The last Strokes album, First Impressions of Earth, came out in 2006, and came off as uneven and awkward, leaving me significantly less than satisfied. Not that I wanted them to keep being the garage rock revivalists of Is This It (2001), undoubtedly one of the most important albums of the 2000s, but the spark seemed to have been slowly slippin...
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Whitney Ballen
Whitney Ballen's music is magic.The first time listening was one of those moments that reality snaps in an inaudible high frequency pitch before your eyes and all that's left are these surreal, extra-real songs.If you're curious, it's something like simple but effective acoustic guitar and drums with her high voice that has a quality something like tape and wax and reverb. Folk/pop music with a...
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Independent Music Discoveries, Issue #24
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Album:The Sun & Earth
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Track:The Unbeliever
*UPDATE* The Royal Chains (Issue # 10) - Pop / Rock - New York, USAFeatured some months ago in regards to their free album Umbrella, the Royal Chains have a fabulous new single out: "Wolf". The sound is noticeably cleaner and more focused than that heard on their debut album (though I do love that for it's grittiness too), summery and catchy as ever!---Francois Peglau - Pop / Rock - Loreto, Per...
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AFIN Music Videos Hits 1,000 + Britpop Forum Affiliation!
I am proud to announce today that our sister site, A Future in Noise Music Videos, has hit 1,000 unique videos posted. This is powered by Tumblr, functional as a channel due to the RANDOM button, with an assortment of embedded music videos from the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and 00s, posted daily. Started in July, it's already the #2 Tumblr tagged as "video" and we have over 100 followers. If you...
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Weekend Listens: Echo & the Bunnymen, The Flaming Lips, Remix Corner
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Echo & the Bunnymen are one of my favorite bands of all-time; I have loved them since I was a kid, from hearing my mom play their albums regularly. As with most of their then-contemporaries that have stuck around through the years, this band have mellowed-out in their sound significantly over time. They have also had to deal with the loss of drummer Pete de Freitas in 1989 and in September 2009...
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Starter Guide: Baroque Pop
What is it?Baroque Pop (aka Baroque Psych – let’s call it BP) is Garage Psych’s rather elegant and refined cousin. Where the latter is all overdriven guitars, shoutyness and acid drenched solos, BP - with its frilly sleeves and paisley cravat, augments the basic rock band with the strains of chamber string quartet, a sprinkling of harpsichord and the swoon of an oboe. These songs are usually
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Independent Music Discoveries, Issue #23
*UPDATE*The Forcefield Kids (Issue #5) - Hip-Hop / Alternative / Electronica / Northeast, UKDue out November 2nd, the Forcefield Kids (Stain(ed) Art bringing the raps and Sleepy on beats) are releasing a new 5-track EP Harmony & Discord. Their socially-conscious delivery, sounding current with, and better than much of what's out there in the genre, in my opinion, modern hip-hop/rap, while retai...
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Natural Snow Buildings - Shadow Kingdom
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Artist:Natural Snow Buildings
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Album:Shadow Kingdom
French duo Natural Snow Buildings, Mehdi Ameziane / TwinSisterMoon and Solange Gularte / Isengrind, are a band I have spoken highly of previously, be it in Under the Radar 2009 and 15 Brilliant Out-of-Print Albums, and also in a guest-post artist feature on SleepWalking Mag about. They've just put out Shadow Kingdom a triple-LP/double CD on Blackest Rainbow. Following that SleepWalking Mag piec...
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Interview with Calvin Markus from Dead Times
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Artist:Dead Times
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Album:Midnight Glass
Calvin Markus, from Dead Times (a band which has been previously featured here, and one of my favorites of the 2000s - see also the reviews on Midnight Glass and Voidism, Vol. 1 + Graves House split cassette), took the time to answer some interview questions for A Future in Noise. I think that Dead Times is making some of the most cool and important music (as well as art works, literature, and ...
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Independent Music Discoveries, Issue #22
Untied States - Other - Georgia, USAI keep doing a double-take every time I see the band name - note the Untied, though that is surely the point! I tend to raise an eyebrow at bands that put their genre as 'Other', but this is one case where a group is concocting something unique. With their description reading "a barrage of driving samples, interlaced melodic sheets of guitars, and just-enough...
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Gig Review: Manic Street Preachers w/ Nico Vega, 9/24/09 at the Fillmore SF
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Well, this is the first gig I've been to since starting A Future in Noise, making this is the very first gig review as well! This is the most biased piece of music journalism you are likely to read here because I do deeply love the Manic Street Preachers and all.I went to see them at the Fillmore in San Francisco yesterday...seeing as they haven't been here in 10 years! That and being encourage...
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A New Weird World?
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Artist:Papa Topo
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Track:Cancion Para Jordi
Some free lo-fi pop from around the globe ...Earlier in 2009 I was involved in putting together the virtual compilation album Crumby Lovers: A New Weird UK Sampler (Yeah yeah, we know can you please just STOP going on about it?). Well, anyway, it featured tracks that were a kind of quirky lo-fi pop that may or may not necessarily have done justice to the (now a little hackneyed) term ‘new weird.
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Keeping Watch on the Music Business: Copyright and Copyleft
This week's topic is inspired by a comment from Kris (TLNOYL) on last week's post, and his reference to this article on Wired: Free! Why $0.00 is the Future of Business. There are numerous issues involved in music and copyright and Creative Commons/copyleft that they can't all be covered here, but here's three of the big-time important ones and corresponding articles for reference so you can r...
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SYNTHSTRUMENTALS
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Track:Theme From Earthshaker
A virtual mixtape of new wave instrumentals from the post punk/new romantic era.Sometimes amazingly great synth pop bands like Japan and even Duran Duran would put out some quite interesting instrumental (or nearly instrumental) tracks as b-sides or album fillers – here are some of them alongside some lesser known vocal free wonders. No doubt there are loads of notably absent tracks that I’ve
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What's on the Horizon
Hello all you fabulous AFIN readers! Just putting a notice out there that I will be away for about a week (headed off to the Bay Area, and seeing the Manic Street Preachers on Thursday!). Meanwhile, there are a couple of fabulous contributor posts forthcoming - look out for them in the next few days! Also in the coming weeks are interviews with Dead Times and E.K. Wimmer, Independent Music Disc...
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Movie - Closer to the Sun (Visions of the Winter Remix)
Hey there, AFIN readers! Here's a fantastic remix to tide you over until next week's full-length Independent Music Discoveries post: New York band Movie's "Closer to the Sun" (White Whales, was reviewed favorably here a couple months ago) remixed by the tentatively-named Visions of Winter:Download - "Closer to the Sun (Visions of the Winter Remix)"
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New Music Video: Jordan Galland - "Everyone Else is Boring"
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Jordan Galland, who was featured here in June, along with his new album Airbrush (one of the best I've heard this year; available via CDBaby), has recently premiered the music video for "Everyone Else is Boring" (my favorite track from the album)! This stop-animation video fits the track perfectly, combining a surreal swirl of collage art with photos of Galland by Francois Hugon; the descriptio...
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Just Wondering
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We're a few months away from the end of the decade, which I'm sure means a LOT of end-of-decade lists should start appearing soon (on sites apart from Pitchfork). Off the top of my head, I would probably include records by Radiohead, System of a Down, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, M.I.A., Kanye West (despite his being a gigantic tit) and Animal Collective on my list. What would you include on yours?
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Great Underrated Bands #2
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Inspired by Marilyn’s recent article on the same theme I thought I’d have a go in the hope that this might become a regular feature on AFIN. It’s a difficult question… there’s so much music and so many obscure artists that one might like to mention for sake of namedropping them but, in all honestly, their minor cult status is perhaps ultimately proportionate to their contribution to pop
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