BANDS

THE BLACK LIPS
Disgruntled teenagers from Atlanta Georgia became the Black Lips. They rejected the stifling cookie cutter script offered them for an unenlightened life staggering out of it instead opting for a more voracious meaninglessness through badass actions and alternate experiences. The Black Lips forged their songs with psychedelic swamp guitar drones and quasi- violent sexual stage comedy with a finger to an out of touch world. They are a commingling of deep dusty Southern back road grit and big city gutter puke. Their records, their shows, their shouts and moans, their big‐tent revival rhetoric with hoary‐throated, drug‐haze mumble mean everything where nothing means anything. Desperate youth from all over the world align with the Black Lips antics that attempt to make sense in a world they can’t make sense of and refuse to try to. www.Black-Lips.com

The Black Lips – Drugs

VIVIAN GIRLS

Vivian Girls released their sophomore album via the wonderful In The Red label on September 8th, 2009. Everything Goes Wrong was released almost exactly a year after In The Red’s reissue of their self-titled debut. While the band has again captured their raw edge – as the influence of ’60s girl groups, The Wipers and California surf, still ring true, Everything Goes Wrong is without a doubt a darker, moodier album than its predecessor. With the My Love Will Follow Me single, the Girls’ sound continues to evolve with a more poppy, vocal-heavy approach.

Over the last year, the Vivian Girls have toured the US, Europe, Japan and Australia, received a considerable amount of national and international press, and they’re showing no signs of slowing down. One of the hardest working bands in America, the Vivian Girls continue to tour heavily whilst working on Wild World and recording new material.

Vivian Girls – When I’m Gone

SURFER BLOOD

When you think of Palm Beach, Florida, what comes to mind? Palm trees swaying gently in the balmy breeze? Scantily-clad bikini buxom babes rollerblading down an infinite slab of coral-colored concrete? How about anthemic, bombastic, life-affirming indie pop? If the latter didn’t occur to you, let us introduce you to Surfer Blood: they call West Palm Beach home and, while still in their early 205 have penned an album worth of catchy, summery indie songs that even the most hook-laden power pop band would rightfully be jealous of.

Comprised of members JP (dubbed “The Mastermind” by the rest of the band), TJ, Thomas, Brian and Marcos, Surfer Blood met one fateful night at an after party for Miami’s Ultra Festival, though they didn’t attend the festival itself (“We do not like the D’n'B,” they proclaim). After discussing music, what else for the remainder of the night, JP decided to recruit the three other guys to perfect a couple of songs he had been working on for some time, and thus, the band was formed.

Scrapping most of their first studio session, Surfer Blood opted to use the remainder of their scholarship money to purchase equipment and move the recording process to their dorm room at Florida Atlantic University. The result is their debut album Astro Coast, to be released January 19, 2010 on Kanine Records. Their first single release, “Swim (To Reach the End),” with its deliciously deafening swaths of reverb and feedback, comes across like early Orange Juice covering every song on Weezer’s Blue Album at once.

If you’re wondering about the name, the band ain’t got no surfer blood in them, and actually denounce the surfer kids of their youth for making their high school experience miserable. As for the moniker itself, one of the band members just randomly yelled it out over the radio in the backseat of the band’s car, which is as good a naming process as any.

Surfer Blood – Twin Peaks

THE STRANGE BOYS

The Strange Boys are an American rock’n'roll band based in Austin, Texas, composed of Ryan Sambol (Guitar, Lead Vocals, Harmonica), Philip Sambol (Bass), Greg Enlow (Guitar), Mikey La Franchi (Drums), Jenna Thornhill-DeWitt (Saxophone, Backing Vocals), and Tim Presley (Backing Vocals). Their music incorporates stylistic elements of garage rock, punk, R&B and country music. Their most recent LP, Be Brave, is available on In The Red in the US and Rough Trade in Europe and Canada.

The Strange Boys – Friday in Paris

THEE OH SEES

John Dwyer (of Coachwhips, Pink and Brown, Landed, Yikes, Burmese, The Hospitals, Sword & Sandals, Superpit, The Drums, The Trawgs, Zeigenbock Kopf and Dig That Body Up It’s Alive!) is in Thee Oh Sees and he seems to be making this band the most serious project. He’s done everything from noise to death metal to punk and now this. Thee Oh Sees are no doubt the lightest of his excursions, but it also shows what may be his very essence. It’s obvious that he loves music and wants to experience it all, touch every aspect, and give it all a go.

Thee Oh Sees have a lo-fi electric-acoustic sound that’s usually soaked in reverb, making it as if you can hear and see the exact room they recorded in. It creates a very distinct mood that fits their style, lyrics, and melodies to a tee.

Thee Oh Sees – I was Denied

QUINTRON AND MISS PUSSYCAT

Quintron has been making genre-defying noise and “Swamp-Tech” dance music in New Orleans for over fifteen years. The majority of his ten full-length albums have the psychedelic soul of New Orleans garage R&B filtered through a tough distorted Hammond B-3 and a cache of self-made electronic instruments.

Miss Pussycat, otherwise known as Panacea Theriac, is a New Orleans based puppeteer. Born in Antlers, Oklahoma, she began learning puppetry at the Christian Puppet Youth Ministry at the First Baptist Church of Antlers. She began her professional career in New Orleans and assisted in founding the influential night club “Pussycat Caverns.” For the past fifteen years she has traveled internationally conducting puppet shows in rock clubs and at international festivals. She is the President of Rhinestone Records and produces vinyl LPs of her puppet’s many bands.

The Quintron and Miss Pussycat live show is one of barely controlled electronic chaos, “Swamp-Tech” dance beats, small explosions, clothes, and entertaining puppet stories. You can experience them live at their own secret club, the Spellcaster Lodge in New Orleans or on one of their many tours around the world. This act somehow has equal relevance in sleazy nightclubs, pizza restaurants, and university lecture halls.

The Quintron and Miss Pussycat – Waterfall

TY SEGALL

San Francisco psych wunderkind Ty Segall continues a tireless musical assault on ears and minds with his third album, Melted. Segall says it sounds like “cherry cola, Sno-Cones and taffy.” Indeed! Over the past two years he’s released records more often than most people do laundry, but somehow there is still a heap of anticipation for this new album on Goner packed full of truly psychedelic pop songs with great vocals and exciting arrangements.

On the heels of two critically acclaimed solo albums, Segall holed up in a basement studio with Mike Donovan of the SicAlps in late 2009 and early 2010 to come up with Melted. It’s a carefree yet precise balance of acoustic and electric elements. Distorted echo and thunder mix together with enough clean guitar lines and addictive choruses to deliver an album that recalls the ’60s without sounding like anything created during that decade. Time melts away, vision melts away, minds melt away. Get Melted!

Ty Segall – Girlfriend

TURBO FRUITS

Turbo Fruits, led by Jonas Stein, is a group of three rambunctious dudes. Jonas, Matt, and Dave all live in Tennessee and can’t get enough of it. When Turbo Fruits isn’t touring, they spend all their time on the river, on the lake, turkey hunting, riding horses, riding motorcycles, lookin at boobs, drinkin cheap beer, tellin bad jokes, cliff jumping, rope swinging, smokin’ Joints, cookin out and chillin in Hot Tubs. Their latest Album is called “Echo Kid” and is out on Fat Possum Records.

Turbo Fruits – Mama’s Mad Cos I Fried My Brain

DJ MR JONATHAN TOUBIN

North America’s most popular soul party DJ, Mr. Jonathan Toubin, isn’t only known his wildly unique 45rpm “maximum rock and soul” sets, but also for throwing legendary parties like Soul Clap and Dance-Off, Shakin’ All Over Under Sideways Down, the Happening, Polyglot Discotheque Declassified, and, most recently, his floating get-down “Ya Ya” Yacht. In only a few short years, this former writer, musician, and record label proprietor’s relentless labors (300+ action-packed annual gigs!) haven’t only sparked and spearheaded the emerging NYC rock and roll underground dance party scene, but have recently been planting seeds and changing nightlife around the globe – from art galleries to rock venues to discos to major music festivals.

JACUZZI BOYS

After a string of successful 7″s , and a full U.S. tour with King Khan and the Shrines these Miami boys bring you their first full length and they don’t disappoint. 12 tracks of good time summer psych jams. Truly captures the top down beach cruising essence of Miami.

Jacuzzi Boys – Island Ave

Ian Svenonius

Ian Svenonius (Gemini) is the leader of the group Chain & the Gang (K Records), the host of vbs.tv’s “Soft Focus” and the author of the highly regarded underground bestseller The Psychic Soviet (Drag City Books). Previous projects include the Nation of Ulysses (a political party/ street gang), The Cupid Car Club (a social entity designed for recreation and relaxation) the Make Up (a religious cult), Scene Creamers/Weird War (a rock n roll group) and Felt Letters (a beat poetry combo). He has toured across the world with these esteemed aggregates and is famed for his dynamic stage persona.

Svenonius has written for the periodicals Vice, Index, BB Gun, Plan B, Sound Collector, Arthur, Ulysses Speaks, Portland Mercury, Dot Dot Dot, Weird War World, and Audio Review among many others.

Ian Svenonius is also a lecturer who has spoken across the country at venues as diverse as Yale University, The University of Pittsburgh, The Mountain Bar, The Branchage Film festival, Reading Frenzy, and the Henry Miller Reading Room (to name a few). He is also a club DJ and his radio show “For God’s sake Do Something” can be heard on 97.5 FM in Washington DC on Sunday nights.