IVY ROOM Presents PARTICLE KID Website [https://www.particlekid.com/]/
Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/particlekid3/]/ Instagram
[https://www.instagram.com/particlekid/]
You can learn a lot when you’re both a member of Neil Young’s
backing band, Promise of the Real, and the son of Willie Nelson. Not
only do you have the chance to learn some of their musical tricks, but
you get to absorb wisdom from two of the most important minds in
Americana. Micah Nelson, who happens to be have had these privileges
for most of his life, is putting all those lessons to good use on his
latest album as Particle Kid, Window Rock.
Due out July 26th via OAR, the record finds Nelson turning his future
folk microscope onto the existential crises plaguing our world.
Together with co-producer Harlan Steinberger, Micah employed recording
techniques that blend analog tapes with modern mixing tech, something
he picked up from his work with Young. He recorded with his touring
band — drummer Tony Peluso and bassist Jeff Smith — in Venice,
California’s Hen House Studios.
The results are as intimate in their psychedelic vastness as they are
warm in their bedroom tones. Lead single “Stroboscopic Light”, for
example, has a sense of chaos in the tumbling layers of sound, but
threaded throughout is a hopefulness winding its way between the
cacophony. It’s an appropriate mix of madness and optimism, as
Nelson says the track tackles our “oversaturated post-modern age of
narcissistic extremism and hyper-normalization.”
Take a listen to “Stroboscopic Light” below via its accompanying
video, which Nelson describes as “an abstract portrait of an
extraterrestrial detective sent to Earth to investigate and document
what the hell happened, but who discovers only madness, the fracturing
of reality, and a planet in moral crisis, where the lines between good
and evil have become blurred and undefined.” Get ready for a trip
THE STEVENSON RANCH DAVIDIANS
Website [https://thestevensonranchdavidians.com/home]/ Facebook
[https://www.facebook.com/stevenson.davidians/timeline?lst=1163308051%3A645109385%3A1578670266]
/ Soundcloud
[https://pictureinmyearrecords.bandcamp.com/album/amerikana]/
Instagram
[https://www.instagram.com/thestevensonranchdavidians/?fbclid=IwAR15c5xrELCi6fFDlfAcwwk-iwb-tHCyTgpTDH0OSpdknWbtSbuq8pbiQuA]
Steeped in the aura of the perennially mythologized psychedelic
culture of Southern California and making music influenced by the
timeless essence of ‘60s psych, folk and soul, woven with strands of
early American roots music, The Stevenson Ranch Davidians has, since
2006, revealed itself in shifting configurations.
While the lineup has continually coalesced around lead singer and
songwriter Dwayne Seagraves, the collective has always had a guiding
vision and goal: to create music that seeks to simultaneously
demystify and deify the human experience.
The band’s new album, Amerikana, The Davidians’ first since 2009,
is scheduled for release in June 2017 on Picture In My Ear Records.
Amerikana represents a new direction for the band, with the dreamy,
flowing sound of albums past infused with a fresh sense of
inspiration, energy and purpose. An eclectic, yet cohesive, set of
songs that glorify the human spirit while condemning those who seek to
destroy it.
Seagraves states that Amerikana also celebrates what he views as true
magic: human will put to action. Through his songs, he hopes to convey
the sense that human beings have been the sole source of all great
insights and achievements throughout history, and that power
originates from within individuals rather than from gods, governments
or other external sources.
The band’s new lineup brings a range of talent, experience and
inspiration to The Stevenson Ranch Davidians’ sound. In addition to
longtime Davidians’ bassist Jessica Latiolait, guitarist Rob
Campanella is a member of The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Quarter
After, while his brother, drummer and backing vocalist Andy
Campanella, is a veteran of Occult Wisdom, Imogene, Chief Nowhere.
Guitarist Misha Bullock, the sole Englishman in the fold, formerly
played with Tennis System.
BILLY & DOLLY
Website [http://billyanddolly.com/]/ Facebook
[https://www.facebook.com/billyanddolly/]/ Bandcamp
[https://billyanddolly.bandcamp.com/]/ Instagram
[https://www.instagram.com/billyanddolly/]
When Billy & Dolly started work on “Five Suns,” their third album,
they had three main items on their agenda: loud guitars, dirty
keyboards, and the end of the world.
San Francisco duo Bill Rousseau and Dahlia Gallin Ramirez first broke
through in 2004 with their heavy, Moog-centric outfit, The Monolith.
After five good years, The Monolith called it quits, but the duo
stayed together, went into songwriting hibernation in Dolly’s
basement, and reemerged as Billy & Dolly, recording two albums, and
sharing the stage with the likes of The Apples in Stereo, Dr. Dog, and
Corin Tucker.
To hear them perform as a duo, with Rousseau on acoustic guitar and
Ramirez on Wurlitzer electric piano, is to hear their gift for vocal
melodies and beautiful arrangements. But to hear them play a loud,
sweaty show with drummer Elliott Kiger and bassist Charley Hine is to
understand them in their element. This element is fully captured on
“Five Suns” and its 12 tracks about — among other things —
post-apocalyptic love, galactic desertion, and Jane Eyre.
Recording at Oakland’s New, Improved Recording with long time
collaborator Jay Pellicci (Deerhoof, Sleater Kinney, The Dodos) they
trusted their instincts and shirked computers in favor of tape. On
tracks like “Setting Sun” and “Marooned,” they pulled out
studio tricks from the 1970s playbooks of Iommi and Page to give Billy
& Dolly’s exquisite compositions bursts of near Black Sabbath levels
to contrast the sweetness of the pair’s vocals.
The keyboards get turned up, too. Ramirez’s Wurlitzer drives several
tracks in its natural state, but also pays its rent as a hairy double
guitar and a rangy, distorted organ. The year before recording the
album, Ramirez pulled out a Moog Opus-3 that had been sitting in her
closet since the end of The Monolith, inspiring the haunting
“Bobby” and the future-nostalgic, Roxy Music-tinted “Next
Invasion.”
But the stars of every song on “Five Suns” are the vocal melodies.
Ramirez and Rousseau take turns at the mic, backing up one another’s
distinctive voices and blending them with the kind of harmonic ease
that usually only happens with siblings.
Visuals by Zach Rodell
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02/03/2020 Last update