Aubrey "Drake" Graham (born October 24, 1986 in Toronto Ontario) is a Grammy nominated Canadian actor and rapper singer signed to Universal Records, he has released two mixtapes 2006's room for improvement in 2007 Comeback Season and 2009's critically acclaimed gone so far as is considered one of the best mixtapes in 2009, he is in the early stages of recording his Major Label Debut tentatively entitled Thank Me Later to be released in March 2010, the first single from the album Best I Ever Had debuted at # 92 and has since reached # 2 on the Billboard Top 100 music ...
To name your band after a towering figure of the romantic period takes balls. So does playing your first show to over 2000 people. But as the decade ticked over and clean slates were needed, Eric Lodwick, Cale Parks & Drew Robinson seized the chance to create their own context. Loosening the ties on past projects, they dug deep into the winter in Greenpoint, Brooklyn to emerge fully formed as BRAHMS (capitalization intentional), calling on musical ghosts and traces, crafting songs that echo evocatively from early childhood down to now, focussing on development and creating something that is truly their own.The band opened for Passion Pit in 2010. According to their Facebook page, the group disbanded in 2011. ...
Unknown Mortal Orchestra first dropped into the world in late 2010 as a bandcamp account carrying a single called ‘Ffunny Ffrends’.‘Ffunny Ffrends’ was everything you imagined it might be – alien beatnik pop music that echoed 60s psychedelia and krautrock minimalism with just a hint of gentle weirdness that suggested its roots might eq...
Foster The People is an indie electro rock band from Los Angeles, CA.Foster They came together in late 2009 when Mark Foster met band mates Cubbie Fink and Mark Ponitus through mutual friends in the Los Angeles music scene. Foster hailing from Cleveland, OH had been writing and recording music since his youth but it wasn’t until the three members came together that Foster’s music for the bands upcoming debut release, Torches, was ready for friends to hear.In early 2010, Foster The People posted their first song “Pumped Up Kicks” on the internet. Days later it was used to score a friend’s fashion video, days after that it showed up on Hype Machine and a year later it had seemed t...
Thanks to his smart lyrics, the Louisiana-based CurrenSy landed a label deal in 2003, but it took three labels and seven years of underground releases before the rapper made his official debut. Born Shante Anthony Franklin and raised in New Orleans, CurrenSy was originally signed to Master P's No Limit label, but in 2005 he made the move to Lil Wayne and Birdman's Cash Money imprint, Young Money. He appeared on Wayne's Tha Carter II album that same year, then in 2006, CurrenSy's "Where Da Cash At" single was released - both on its own and as part of Wayne's Dedication 2 mixtape - but a promised album never materialized. Not one to sit idle, CurrenSy started Fly Society with professional skateboarder Terry Kennedy in 2007. The bran...
Black Up is the new sonic move from Shabazz Palaces. Like rich velvet hijabs or gold threaded abayas. Luxury as understood by the modest. Shabazz Palaces. If Bedouins herded beats instead of goats and settled in Seattle instead of the Atlas Mountains, this would be their album. Forward thinkers but nostalgic for a sparer time when ancient astronomers only recognized five planets. Hip hop. Black light uses electromagnetic radiation to eradicate microorganisms, but shabazz didn’t come to kill a sound, just to shine their own incandescent lamp on this. Hear. Hard and clear....
Alexander Ebert was only five years old when he discovered how much he loved recording. He found himself taping a cappella versions of songs from the Stand By Me soundtrack, complete with vocalized basslines and mouthed drums. “You could hear my sister in the background crying at one point. She’s two, and I’m trying to coax her into performing with me,” he explains. ...
southern california and the music born of it are in my blood. i was born here, too, and i live here now. it’s a place of extremes in either direction, but most of the time the sun at the magic hour or the night blooming jasmine in the breeze or some fleetwood mac turned up with the car windows rolled down is enough to help us ignore what ails this place. Now here i go again i see a crystal vision…the quick story goes like this: after a stint in new york city, i spent about eight years living in this apartment on wilton place in hollywood. it was really small but i...
You can go ahead and call Rooney's new album, Eureka, their declaration of independence. After several years trudging under the weight of a major label deal that never quite fit them right, the Los Angeles band is making a bold, fresh start: Rooney recorded and produced Eureka themselves, and will be releasing the disc June 8th on their own new label, California Dreamin' Records through Warner Music Group's Independent Label Group. The 12-track Eureka is their most mature, nuanced collection yet, and still retains their classic buoyancy and catchiness.Eleven years after they started the band as teenaged friends with a shared love of the Beatles, Cheap Trick and ELO, lead singer and guitarist Robert Schwar...
THE ACACIA STRAIN has unleashed the first monstrous track off of their upcoming full length, "Wormwood," due July 20th via Prosthetic Records. The track is titled "Jonestown" and is streaming now exclusively, at store.prostheticrecords.com. Prosthetic Records has launched the official pre-order for the album, which will be available on CD and LP in six different colors. "Wormwood," can be ordered on its own, or in a variety of different package combinations with shirts, hooded sweatshirts, in limited collectors' boxes (featuring an exclusive banner, pin and chip clip!) and more! "Wormwood" was recorded at Planet Z Studios in Hadley, MA with Zeuss (Hatebreed, Chim...
While ‘fjord' is a fun word to say, it invokes an intimidating image. Angular, jutting, foreboding walls, consuming you as you row within the inlet, and perhaps get a mean snap of vertigo. And that's probably the idea behind Toronto-based Fjord Rowboat. Informed by the wall-of-sound aesthetic, Fjord Rowboat constructs large, soaring, sometime ominous soundscapes, blended craftily with a sweeping minor key pop sensibility. The strength of their first album, Saved the Compliments for Morning, in tandem with a powerful live performance meant to test the structural integrity of the room earned them the stage with the likes of Handsome Furs, Red Sparrowes, Uncut, A Place to Bury Strangers, Enon, The Octopus Project and Th...
The Literary Greats are evolving. Their second release ‘Ocean, Meet the Valley' is a little darker, a little deeper, and more dynamic yet retains some of the warm, catchy hooks that characterized their first release. They teamed up with engineer/producer Chris Grainger with one goal: to bring out the best in each other. Working long hours over 10 days, they bottled up a year of life, love, loss, and dreams to create a record with no pretensions and as rich as the gulf air.Sonically, this record possesses vintage tones through the use of '70s era equipment and concepts. Acoustic guitars and warm, gritty electrics are intertwined with the smooth chime of a Rhodes or the haunt of a Hammond. Tones find ...
Bowery Beasts, hailing from the sun-drizzled streets of Los Angeles, are a rock n roll group whose underground EP, "Venice Peach," caught the ear of 90's cult legend Ken Andrews of Failure, who produced two forthcoming records. After a 45" release on their own label, and a slew of local fests and one-offs including openers for Tame Impala and J Roddy Walston & the Business, their latest creation "Heavy You" is set to come out worldwide July 5, 2011. While they count themselves as soul children of the sweet n deadly strut of Thin Liz...
Cobson is an indie rock trio from Montpellier, France, founded in 2005 by Anna Muchin (guitar, piano, vocals) and Laurent Bencharif (baritone guitar), then Camille Gaudou joined in 2010 as new drummer. The band gave shows in France and was nominated "Découverte" at the Printemps de Bourges festival. On November 2010, before moving to Brussels, Cobson released a first and self-titled album mastered by Alan Douches. Their track "Like a bike without brakes" has been broadcasted by BBC 6 in Tom Robinson "Fresh on the net" programme....
Beginnings We Are Scientists is a band with two primary, famous members: Keith Austin Murray (‘Keith') and Christopher Ian Cain (‘Christopher I. Cain'). The two met at college in Southern California, where it's fair to say that they both majored in ‘Babes'. Although that wasn't technically a focus available at their college, one could definitely assert that had it been possible to do so, both Keith and Chris would have graduated with honors in ‘Babes'. Not that there was anything ‘honorable' about the way the two went about their ‘course work', as it were. No, they left a trail of scorched social earth everywhere they went, everywhere their ‘studies'...
Keelhaul is like the one friend that you're actually looking forward to seeing when you fly home for the holidays... Still smoking weed in the parent's basement, but, try as you might, you can't fault him for doing it because ultimately you're fucking convinced he's got some shit figured out that you're still years away from. Basically, this guy Keelhaul is a solid dude and maybe part of you wants to be him, no shame in it... most people are susceptible to societal pressures... you wanted to be an adult and you thought you knew what that meant... trips to the wine store... you should kick your own ass.Keelhaul's Triumphant Return to Obscurity, is not just a clever name for an album title marking a band's return fr...
Worn Thin, the first full-length from NYC's WEEP, takes their aggressive and firmly pop-structured songs to a place of heightened grandeur. Sweeping choruses, horn-driven verses, and lush production work seamlessly with WEEP's guitar and drum-driven sound. At times the listener is reminded of The Head On The Door-era Cure enjoying the strange bedfellow of Catherine Wheel or Placebo. WEEP's pilot, Doc Hammer (incidentally the same Doc Hammer who co-created Cartoon Network's The Venture Bros.), brings his uniquely raspy vocals to the front on this release creating a bizarre but not unfamiliar kind of New Dark Pop.On Worn Thin, WEEP maintains their hard edge and generates a sound filled with loosely-bridled ...
School of Seven Bells take their magic seriously. Symbols, myths, mantras-in the hands of sisters/vocalists Alejandra and Claudia Deheza and guitarist/producer Benjamin Curtis (formerly of On!Air!Library! and Secret Machines, respectively), these mystical practices become achingly human, methods of making sense of an emotionally complex world. School of Seven Bells' sophomore album Disconnect from Desire-the follow-up to the Brooklyn trio's breakthrough debut Alpinisms-takes its title from one of Brian Eno's oblique stratagems; its' cryptic album image is a "sigil," a mystical figure containing the energy and intent of the album entire. The real magic of Disconnect from Desire, though, lives i...
A new force in song craft, Cate Le Bon currently resides in Cardiff's infamous French quarter and befitting a songwriter who only writes in the dark, her music is a heady and highly personal Gallic stew of equal parts Nico, Malkmus and the chronicler's own emotional observations on the impossibility of existence.Disheartened by the constant stream of dead animals she found herself burying in her parents farm in Penboyr, West Wales, and inspired by her father's impeccable record collection (The Velvets, Neil Young, Pavement et all) Cate packed her things and begrudgingly set sail for the neon lights and ample rehearsal space available in her country's capital. Following a string of club night shows in the ci...
Providence, RI pop power-trio MakeUpBreakUp have announced the late summer release of the band's debut full length, Scents. The group's effervescent sound invites comparisons to a blend of 90s Britpop and 80s new wave. Forming in the summer of 2007, MakeUpBreakUp has been catching the ears, eyes and libidos of the public from the start. With just a handful of pop-minded demos and a couple of shows to their name, Mike Lamantia Jr, Eric McNeil and Zan (formerly of A Trillion Barnacle Lapse, Rockethouse, and Groupthink fame) signed to California's S.A.F. Records for the release of the trio's debut EP, We Prefer Not To... Upon the EP's release in August 2008, the trio received widespread critical ...
Stretford End is a Hollywood-based rock/alternative/indie band that combines soaring vocals, thought-provoking lyrics, solid rhythms and haunting melodies into an incredibly catchy wall of music.Formed in January of 2009 in Berkeley, California, Stretford End quickly built up a strong local following with their explosively intense live performances and were soon selling out shows in Berkeley and San Francisco, CA. The band's debut record, "Air-Conditioned Life", was released in the summer of 2009 on iTunes, and began to generate buzz. A true example of a "do-it-yourself" band, Stretford End wrote, produced, tracked, mixed, and mastered "Air-Conditioned Life" themselves.In March...
TEE-M (Tariq Mirza) grew up in Karachi, Pakistan hearing rock/pop on the short-wave radio, listening to street musicians playing the tunes of the land and learning to play on a hand-me-down guitar. TEE-M recently completed his first album EARTHIOTIC...songsfromaoneroompalace, which made it's worldwide debut on "Rock 50" internet radio show on WPMD.org...
Following up on their 2007 release, Time On Earth - their first studio recording in fourteen years - New Zealand dream-pop auteurs Crowded House deliver Intriguer, scheduled for release on July 13th, 2010, on Fantasy Records, a division of Concord Music Group.The internationally acclaimed group begins a nationwide tour of the U.S. and Canada in support of the new album on Monday, July 12th. Also available that day will be the 2-disc Intriguer Deluxe Edition, featuring a special bonus live DVD. Produced by Jim Scott (Wilco), Intriguer once again brings together singer/guitarist and chief songwriter Neil Finn with original Crowded House bassist Nick Seymour and keyboardist/guitarist Mark Hart, who'd been...
A veteran of the New York music scene, Chancius honed his live performance skills playing to crowds in the New York City subway system where he first started selling homemade demos. Fans of his music began to recognize him on the street as the subway musician with the striking vocals and memorable song lyrics. It was at this point that Chancius lent his vocals and song writing skills to the electro-rock outfit Automatic Duo. During his tenure as front man, Chancius toured towns and cities throughout the US. ...
"I'm 'jumping on my bed, singing out my car window' kind of excited," beams AUTOMATIC LOVELETTER's energetic and feisty frontwoman, Juliet Simms, regarding the release of her debut album TRUTH OR DARE on June 22, 2010 via SIN (SonyMusic Independent Network). "I still can't believe it's finally happening!" The album comes just before the band launches their Summer festivities on 2010's Van's Warped Tour.For many of her fans who have been anxiously waiting, Automatic Loveletter's debut may have been a long time coming but it's definitely well worth the wait. With songs like the slinky and anthemic empowerment singalong opening track "Heart Song," the alt-rock powerhouse "D...
Tent is about traveling, about moving on while sitting still, about packing up in place. Mix the rural folk setting of Montgomery, Alabama with the urban rhythms of New York City and you get a kind of electronic meditation that lets the mind rest and wander, creating space to let go and dance. Tent is not so much about camping as it is about journeys, about mobile movement. Mobile Wash Unit frontman Andy Snyder left the home of Hank Williams for Atlanta to study physics and philosophy at Emory, and then Chicago to study theology at University of Chicago.His advisors were a priest writing on existentialism and a Buddhism and Bob Dylan expert immersed in the mystics. They both spoke at his ordination in rur...
It would be an understatement to say that 2010 has already been a landmark year for Twin Atlantic. From a triumphant hometown show selling out the 1250-capacity Glasgow ABC, to a European stint with Enter Shikari and culminating an epic US tour, Twin Atlantic have already hit 17 countries this year and are becoming a truly world-beating band. This summer will see the band playing their biggest shows yet: not only have they been personally invited to support The Gaslight Anthem on their UK tour (including stops at Glasgow Academy on 23 June and Brixton Academy on 29 June), but they have just been announced as support to blink-182 on their UK dates in Aberdeen, Glasgow and Dublin. Sam...
One of the most exciting bits of news to drop in the past week was the announcement of The Seedless Summer Tour with 3 amazing bands: Slightly Stoopid, Shwayze (and Cisco), and Rebelution. We were lucky to be able to set up an interview with Wesley Finley, drummer of Rebelution. They just completed a tour and got back from South America.How did the name Rebelution come about? While brainstorming one day it somehow just made sense to put the words "rebel" and "revolution" together. We use it as way to put a positive spin on rebelling, as sometimes that word has a negative connotation. Describe your band in one word. Phantasmagorical.Do you ...
Formed in 2005, Swedish rock act Stone Antica was first described as a local funk-rock band. Over the years their sound has developed into something more unique with rougher riffs and louder songs, though their funky roots can still be heard in their music even today. This quartet consists of vocalist Martin Sommansson, guitarist Edvin Egir, bassist Jon Liedberg and drummer David Sätermo.As many others, Stone Antica falls under the category of' "one of those struggling basement bands". Since the very beginning they have been writing and recording songs intensively, though it was not until 2008 that they released their first EP, titled A Goddess Kiss. From this six-track record emerged songs su...
There have been countless records that begin with the same bombast as The Most Serene Republic's ...And The Ever Expanding Universe, but few have taken listeners down a path of such enriching, introspective discovery. Long masters at stimulating senses and stirring emotions, the Ontario-based band have never sounded this immediate and attainable.The sonic density of their previous efforts has given way to more dynamic, engaging fare, as visceral as the most obviously cloying pop music but with a more scintillating head on its shoulders.So what's prompted a shift in musical direction for The Most Serene Republic? According to the band's musical figurehead Ryan Lenssen, the group is highly critical o...
