The Deli Burlington - All about the Burlington Indie Rock, Folk and Other Music Scenes! + Online Music Charts
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For the past two years I have been working with the Deli – New England and today is my last day a editor. Here is a thank you video I made for everyone. Visit my new blog at: www.DesertRaceBoston.com. Thank you all!
Portland, Maine's Brenda have had a pretty intense summer. They played the Nateva festival and they released Silver Tower, a energizing collection of songs influenced by late 90's rock. Chock-full of delicious and emotional melodies, Silver Tower is a perfect road trip album. Some of the songs have a haunting aura to them while others are more fast-paced and dancy making a great contrast in over-all sound (think The Strokes). Brenda have a bunch of shows coming up around New England including the Wilco Solid Sound Festival at Mass MOCA.
Jul 30 2010 10:00P Bayside Bowl w/ the Rattlesnakes Portland, Maine
Aug 10 2010 7:00P hallowell waterfront Hallowell, Maine
Aug 14 2010 1:30P MASS MoCA, Solid Sound Festival North Adams, MA
Aug 27 2010 9:00P Empire w/ Metal Feathers and Doomstar! Portland, Maine
Are you a New England band or musician? Have you toured through Boston? Then I'm willing to wager that unless you were put on an existing bill elsewhere in Boston, you've played at All Asia Bar in Cambridge's Central Square. Marc Shulman, the owner, is famous for letting just about anyone onto his club's humble stage. He also gives the hosting band each night more freedom to do what they want with their time than many other club owners in Boston would be comfortable even considering.
So it is in true Marc fashion that he embarks on a new project, entertainment-minded for him and exposure-minded for the musicians he's hosted: a playlist, indeed a mighty one, featuring every band and musician that has played there (and who have recorded music, of course). The playlist will then be played over the house speakers at both All Asia and Marc's restaurant in Taiwan. That's right - passive exposure both at home and overseas.
So, if you've played All Asia in the past and would like selections of your music to be involved, head over to this blog posting to find the link and password to a web drop box to which you can submit some or all of your music. Marc has also offered to dig through all music submitted to find his favorites, so if you don't have the time to pick any "single(s)," Marc will do so for you. So here's hoping you trust his taste.
Vermont's The Day's Weight recently released a new EP which has been mixed by Paul Kolderie and Mastered by Jeff Lipton, both Boston legends who have worked with The Pixies and Radiohead to name a few. The Day’s Weight will be touring around the East Coast through July. Tonight they are at Arlene’s Grocery in Manhattan.
Thursday July 22nd - Garwood, New Jersey - The Crossroads
Friday July 23rd - Bethesda, Maryland - The Barking Dog
Friday July 30th - Situate, Massachusetts - The River Club
The Deli is throwing a Burlington-based showcase tomorrow at the Monkey House in Winooski, VT with a pretty diverse lineup of native Burlington acts. The Day's Weight is into indie rock meets western vibes. Neon Magus is a heavy psychedelic tribal squadron. Nuda Veritas creates beauitful sonic textures with loops and her gorgeous voice. Busted Brix mixes ska horn play with tight indie rock rhythms. They will all be leveling the stage with an upbeat night of sounds starting tomorrow at 8:30pm. (Note: Unfortunately, The Feverbreakers will not be playing.)
We might be in a new golden age of underground electronic music, call it what genre you will. Glo-fi, chillwave, psychrock: sexy names that never quite do justice to the music they’re meant to describe. You’d think an entire generation of American youth was mainlining Robotussin while nodding off over a Moog in a sepia-tinted bedroom. But if all these kids were really huffing computer cleaner, you’d hardly get the choice selection of well-crafted, just-enough-polished electronica that we have today. Acts like Blackbird Blackbird, Pollination, Toro Y Moi, Truman Peyote and Boston’s PPALMM are putting out impossibly ready-to-play music that peels off into experimental directions while still maintaining a pop sensibility. Not all of these acts are touring, or even gigging; many remain bedroom wunderkinds. But it’s a sign of overall fertility that these acts are flowering in the absence of extensive club support. If the music is good, everything else follows. PPALMM’s Cal-Aesthetics is the latest crown of laurels on the brow of this burgeoning scene that’s going to outlive its half-snarky glo-fi label.
The tracks from Cal-Aesthetics hew more to the techno end of the spectrum, away from the warped tape warblings of a Neon Indian. In fact, the overall sound is pretty clean, though dense and detailed. There’s no magnetized tape stressing here to produce that half-step hurky-jurky fade-in/fade-out rhythm that’s so popular these days. PPALMM sneaks in rhythm the “old fashioned” way, with artfully constructed samples and beats. Tracks ‘New Nostalgia’ and ‘Revel’ bring to mind middle period Aphex Twin. The latter especially invokes the heavier, dirrrtier house sounds of Richard D. James in his UK club mode. The medium tempo ‘_outherewithme_’ and ‘elec_TR_olling’ have a leisurely pace and subtlety reminiscent of Endtroducing-era DJ Shadow. All great tracks, but the heart and soul of Cal-Aesthetics is probably ‘Acid Cops’, a techno-thriller that harkens back to the straightup house grinders of the early 90s while infusing the sampling vocabulary with digital treats those pre-Macbook luddites could hardly have fathomed.
PPALMM is probably one of those underground acts that trends more towards the bedroom wunderkind at this point. Though the man behind the music Paul Morse (Paul M. = PPALMM- get it?) has gigged regular in the Boston area, and been on some great bills with Toro Y Moi, Das Racist, Truman Peyote and Class Actress, you get the feeling that outside of New England PPALMM is an unknown quantity. Cal-Aesthetics should change this and hopefully open a few doors. It’s a good thing to hear music from this special scene that doesn’t lean hard on the warbled tape, tremolo-ed “chill thump” to grab the listener’s attention. The “chill thump” could become the new disco beat- played out, lamed out- if people don’t watch out. But if it does, PPALMM will be high and dry with an album that visits Chillville, yet, thankfully, doesn’t live there.
Alliston, Mass band, 28 Degrees Taurus is swinging through Burlington tomorrow for the late night shift to baptize the place with their dreamy classic psych take on the My Bloody Valentine sounds. Also joining them are a couple of heads from Burlington's Aether Everywhere/Mars Pyramid camp, the le duo and VIKOMT, to add the noisy improvs and the synthy drones to the mix. Should be a pretty submerged space echo type of show. Things kick of at 11pm at the Radio Bean.
The Deli - New England will be holding our 3rd showcase at the House of Blues - Front Room on July 1st. We'll be featuring three of Massachusetts' finest. Vostok 4, a unique pop-rock band with the elastic creativity and sound of the Talking Heads. Ghost Quartet's new album is currently our featured album of the month, they hail from Western Mass. Trip-rockers, Those Wolves Actually Happened sound like Modest Mouse in outer space. Most importantly, this show is FREE! So you have no reason not to come. Take the train to Fenway. There is no Red Sox game, so if you are driving you can find parking, I'm sure.
See you there.
July 1st - House of Blues - Front Room - 15 Landsdowne St. Boston, MA - FREE - 21+
Day 5 of Burlington's Other Music Festival looks to be the cream of the crop for Burlington's ambient/noise outfits and artists. Burlington's godfather to the scene, if you will, Greg Davis, will be making his festival appearance as well as other veterans of the area A Snake in the Garden, Toby Aronson, and Lawrence Welks & Our Bear to Cross. Another exciting collabartion with Ashley Paul and percussionist Eli Keszler is set to grace the stage. Other performers include Katarina Miljovic, Stencil/Magic, and Ensemble V. Looks like there will also be some sort of open improv session, which is sure to birth some interesting sounds. Everything is happening at 8pm at North End Studios.
Day 4 of Burlington's Other Music Festival is another jazz colaboration heavy night, but the big attraction of the night is ex-Burlington experimental giant Ashley Paul in collaboration with Anthony Colman. One of the most exciting acts of the whole week. Also fleshing out the night are Johnny T and the Raccoonists, Elbow Room, Michael Gardiner/Derek Beckvoice/Peter Negroponte, Xander Naylor/Ian Kovac, and Zack Cooper/Christ Madden/Vic Dimotis. Things kick off at 8pm at North End Studios as usual.
Psychedelic swirling lures, introducing Forest People with atmospheric effects, slide guitar and nebulous, distant vocals. It builds softly before dropping dead into one crunchy, snarled-lip guitar lick. The band kicks it aside with the verse, Daniel Tortoledo's vocals immediately in the high-register, the rhythm guitar jiving like 70's funk. It's as hypnotizing an opener as this listener has encountered in a very long time. But The Highway, much as the name suggests, isn't content to idle in one place. "Frozen Sun" cruises away from a desert sunset and a troubled past; there's defeat in the lyrics, but it's accepted, calm, soothed by the breeze and the knowledge that tomorrow is a new day. The title track reminds what a spell a well thought out chord progression and back-up vocals can weave - it's a stunning, down-tempo meditation. "Song for the World" is utterly beautiful; if you're the type to let music touch you, this one will, and it's thanks to plumb ingenious song-writing: An entrancingly bittersweet opening gives way to one hell of a surprising French interlude (yes, both linguistically and musically); the song loops back on itself, gaining weight and fleshing out, and by the end, you might not know whether to laugh, cry, or sing along - even though they've switched languages again, this time to Spanish. Now, I know I'm a bit of a sap, but the raw emotionality of the record is worth noting because it's a field in which psychedelically-minded rock 'n roll rarely succeeds. But it's rock and roll, after all, so fear not if you just want to put your fist in the air - there's attitude in abundance, sharp and edgy soloing, inspired rhythm changes; hell, there's even a sing-along drum-and-vocal break. There's still some residue of the "rock is dead" prophesying, some grumbling that rock and roll is all, at this point, recycled goods, and that the new breed of rock is not really "rock" so much as indie, as experimental, as post-this or that-core. Buy Forest People. And then buy it for anyone you know who buys that sh*t.
- Cullen Corley
The Deli is throwing a Burlington-based showcase tomorrow at the Monkey House in Winooski, VT with a pretty diverse lineup of native Burlington acts. 
Alliston, Mass band, 
Day 5 of Burlington's 
Day 4 of Burlington's 
