Beautiful song off the new Lower Dens album, available via Gnomonsong. Details on the band’s current tour, plus a great photo blog, are at Lower Dens on tumblr.
Lower Dens features the vocals of Jana Hunter, who was one of 20 artists on Arthur’s 2004 compilation Golden Apples of the Sun, curated by Devendra Banhart (available for $10 from the Arthur Store).
Jana also played the Arthurdesh benefit in Brooklyn in early 2009, for which we are forever grateful.
We are psyched to welcome her and her new band to Pappy & Harriet’s Palace in Pioneertown, California for a special FREE, ALL-AGES, special DUSKTIME (6pm) show on Sunday, September 5.
Flipping sonic channels on a cosmic TV, we begin this episode of Arthur Radio as sound traveling through an electrical conduit, crackling back and forth between fragmented news stories, advertisement jingles, and satellite static. At the end of the wire we are released into a gaseous, airy atmosphere, where we mutate into Krypton floating in a fluorescent purple light bulb. It is in this alien terrain that we meet our otherworldly special guest James Ferraro @ 55:55 mins, who slowly takes a human form before our eyes.
Manning the helm of a translucent convertible, he drives us down an interstellar slide until we eventually land on Highway 1, blaring an 80s hit grittily at top volume on the car radio, an orange pink and yellow sunset sparkling above the horizon. Many miles away, at the top of Mount Everest’s K2, an avalanche begins to rumble, stirring the perfect sea of snow below. We are everywhere at once; all possibilities exist simultaneously. Traversing between them has never been easier.
If you’re gonna (essentially) cover Spacemen 3’s “Revolution” in 2010, good god this is the way to do it. For all the fucked up children of the world, we give you “Sunset,” the opener off White Noise Sound‘s debut album, produced with obvious great care by Cian Ciaran from Super Furry Animals, out Sept. 21 through the good people at Alive/Naturalsound Records. Spacemen 3’s Pete Kember (Sonic Boom) had something to do with this album’s recording.
New Masters of Reality album out in North America in October, with tour (!). Info: mastersofreality.com
Chris Goss: beloved Masters of Reality mainman for twenty-plus years—a storied New York band whose debut album was produced by Rick Rubin and released on American Records, which was followed by a move to California and some time on the record label that brought us Tone-Loc. For two years, three tours and a studio album, Masters of Reality’s drummer was legendary fiercehead Ginger Baker of Cream. Pine/Cross Dover is the band’s first studio effort in five years, and finds longtime drummer John Leamy once again on skins, joined by Brian O’Connor on bass, and Dave Catching (Eagles of Death Metal, Earthlings, QOTSA, etc) and Mark Christian on guitars.
Here’s the two covers for the new album, and the opening salvo…
Goss is also known as: Kyuss producer, occasional Queens of the Stone Age/Desert Sessions member/collaborator, UNKLE contributor, and, with Twiggy Ramirez and Zach Hill, one-third of Goon Moon. As one-half of the pictured-below The 5:15ers (QOTSAer Josh Homme was the other half), he headlined the second night of ArthurBall in Los Angeles in spring 2006.
Let’s have some classic Masters from the past. Here’s a couple from the Ginger Baker era, first up is a live rendition of “John Brown” off Masters’ first album…
“Mister Who?”: A video by Casey Niccoli from the Ginger Baker era…
A live one from the Queens era…
And an unbelievably majestic 1999 live take on another classic from Masters’ first album…
Goss is the author of arguably the best piece of neighborhood/cooking writing to appear so far in the pages of Arthur: check out his super-porkout Immigrant’s Sauce recipe/reminisence from the Brian Eno cover ish (No. 17, July 2005—still available, collectors!).
Let’s wrap it up with a message/manifesto to artists from Goss…
“Heat lightning,” those soundless, electrified lines that sometimes fill the sky on hot summer nights, are actually an indication of a faraway storm which may or may not be moving your way. While the accompanying sound of thunder is too distant to hear, the unholy light show remains visible from rooftops for many miles, providing a dazzling and magnificent omen of the oncoming deluge.
This week on Arthur Radio, Brooklyn’s Up Died Sound creates the sonic inverse of this experience; eyes closed, we listen as warm cascades of sound fall around us, giving the impression that the storm is now here, and this time the lightning can be heard, but not seen…
If you’re currently in the NYC area, you can see Up Died Sound perform live this Thursday 7/29 at Zebulon w/ Mother of Fire & Bow Ribbons. Watch out for their upcoming self-released LP, available August 2010.
Arthur Magazine is super psyched to welcome longtime office favorites (and ArthurFest ’05 alumni) Radar Brothers, Sleepy Sun and Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound to High Desert honkytonk Pappy and Harriet’s Palace in Pioneertown, California, near the Joshua Tree National Park.
The Radars—makers of “space cake/ice cream art rock” (their words)—are touring behind their sixth album, The Illustrated Garden, recently released by Merge Records. Gorgeous as always, it’s their first with a new rhythm section, which picks up the pace here and there from the usual Radars lope and burn. (You can listen to a stream of the album at the Merge site.)
Arrive early, as our friends from Los Angeles will go onstage at 8pm, as the sun goes down over the High Desert—in other words, right when and where they belong.
Around 10pm, Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound will take the stage. Here’s a warm, almost mournful slice of archetypal West Coast psychedelic guitar rock off When Sweet Sleep Returned, the Bay Area quartet’s second album, out via Tee Pee Records.
Pappy and Harriet’s is located in Pioneertown, which is about 2.5 hours’ drive from Los Angeles. It is next to Yucca Valley. The Joshua Tree National Park is 20 minutes’ drive away. Daytime in the summer is bright and hot, but, because of the high elevation (4,000 feet), significant cooling occurs as the sun sets and the stars come out. This ain’t Palm Springs or Coachella—nights are really pleasant here. Especially if you bring some space cakes.
Bonus: there is almost zero cel phone reception in Pioneertown, which helps you to enjoy where you are…
For inexpensive motel and camping options right behind Pappy & Harriet’s, check out
At the center of a wind tunnel, we find ourselves stuck between perspectives. Is the world moving at a million miles around us, or are we the ones who are flying? This week, join hands with Hairy Painter and Ivy Meadows as they plunge into the unknown, fortified by Prince Rama of Ayodhya‘s ancient primordial howls, growling synthesizer moans and consciousness-melting pulsations, which swirl like electrified streams of sonic debris in the positively charged atmosphere… “Give yourself. Lose yourself.“
[HAIRY PAINTER + IVY MEADOWS DJ SET] keiji haino – look, darkness and light both begin to copy clara rockmore – the swan conrad schnitzler – electric garden s.d. batish – raga tilang alaap far east family band – live in l.a. 1978 seltaeb – nug mraw a si ssenippah alejandro jodorowsky – tarot will teach you/burn your money arthur russell – the name of the next song robert johnson (on speed? <—–http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Johnson_musician Playback_issues_in_extant_recordings) – – hold my body down rusty santos – feel radio signals (botanical mix) pocahaunted – time fist julian lynch – topi garden 2 mawan te dhiyan – surinder kaur & parkash kaur sun ra – celestial road albert ayler – the wizard sonny sharock – black woman nagane aki – the wind that flows through the trees paul metzger – the uses of infinity (side a)
Properly rambunctious Fall homage from Thee Oh Sees, featuring everyone’s favorite ex-Coachwhip/Pink and Brown-er, John Dwyer. Off their tasty new grinder, Warm Slime, available from In the Red Records of Los Angeles, California. Spiffy cover too.
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