Myspace: The Championship
YouTube: Mindpool Live

We’ve teamed up with 91.7 WMSE to bring Dosh & White Hinterland to the Cactus Club in Milwaukee on Wednesday, April 14th.

This tour will showcase new material for both artists. White Hinterland (Casey Dienel) follows up Phylactery Factory with Kairos, out March 9th (Dead Oceans) and Dosh readies the release of his new album, Tommy on April 13th.

Tickets: $8 Advance / $10 Day of Show
On Sale: Buy Tickets Online Now

Elsewhere:

Aquarium Drunkard: Off The Record :: White Hinterland (Portland, OR)
A.V. Club Madison: Dosh brings the studio on tour

Myspace: Dosh
Myspace: White Hinterland

MP3: Dosh – “The Lost Take”
MP3: White Hinterland – “Icarus”

By Jon Stone | @jwstone

grass|roots — ep. 2

Since seeing Béla Fleck’s Africa Project last Sunday night (at the Canopy Club in Urbana, IL), I’ve been thinking about what I might say here to communicate what a unique experience it was. I think it might be best if I do some showing instead of telling. Consider first this video, which shows the meeting of Fleck with Tanzanian musician Anania Ngoliga:

Now have a listen to N’goni Ba, the seven-piece group from Mali (pictured above):

These are the musicians who accompanied Béla Fleck on Sunday night. Anania played his ilimba or “thumb piano” — something I had only seen five-note versions of in the past — and N’goni Ba’s Bassekou Kouyate is a master of the West African lute or n’goni. The n’goni is a seven-string instrument that is thousands of years old and thought to be an ancestor of the American banjo (though how the n’goni can have more than three strings is beyond me: the neck is the diameter of a small broom handle!).

Fleck is an undisputed banjo master. He’s an innovator and his work transcends genre. He’s bound to show up again and again in this series. He’s won thirteen Grammy awards for his work, most often with the Flecktones, but also for various other projects. And just a few weeks ago, his “Africa Sessions” received two. He’s gone beyond mere progressive virtuosity here. With this Africa project he’s making some important arguments, acknowledging gracefully but forcefully that American folk history is not just American. Our roots extend into Africa and beyond. He knows from his experience in bluegrass and jazz that music can be a key to understanding culture. It unlocks hidden doors and grants access to the hearts of people in ways that other intellectual explorations cannot — which might have something to do with the title of the project. It’s called Throw Down Your Heart (The flash homepage linked here is astounding. Spend some time there exploring the project’s variety of places and contributors.)

The show was amazing. Fleck graced us with a few solo numbers, but his priority was clearly to shine a spotlight on each of his collaborators. He demonstrated how the kind of musical conversation begun in the video I shared above can evolve to become beautiful show pieces. These collaborations are meant, I think, to celebrate the unmistakable similarities in our cultural musical traditions by bringing them, at last, to our attention. In fact, I love that Throw Down Your Heart somewhat undermines  some of definitions I tried to flesh out in my first grass|roots post last week (right out of the gate in episode 2!). In describing his idea behind the project Béla says: “I thought it was important for people to realize where the banjo comes from . . .  it’s been associated so much with a white-southern stereotype that most people don’t realize it’s an African instrument.”  By finding a role for the banjo in African music (rather than the other way around) Fleck finds a way to not just celebrate but venerate African music and musicians.  Indeed, with Throw Down Your Heart Béla Fleck helps to correct our notions of what is meant when we talk about roots music.

Buy: Béla Fleck – Tales from the Acoustic Planet, Vol. 3: Africa Sessions
Buy: Béla Fleck : Throw Down Your Heart (DVD Documentary)

By Alex Schaaf

In yet another case of a tragic misunderstanding, when I first heard of Surfer Blood, I assumed they were part of the “west coast lo-fi” movement, one that spawned bands like Wavves – not exactly my favorite group ever. So I let them go for a couple months, even though their name kept popping up in impressive places – being featured as Best New Music on Pitchfork, receiving features in Rolling Stone, Paste, and other noteworthy publications. Then finally, last week I found my way back to Surfer Blood and their debut album “Astro Coast,” and I’m glad I did.

Rather than dealing with lo-fi fuzziness, Surfer Blood, based out of Florida, is a guitar rock band, drawing instant comparisons to such heavyweights as Pavement or Dinosaur Jr. Pavement was the first band I went to, as the laidback swagger of both the guitars and the vocals made me think of Stephen Malkmus and crew right away. But the more I investigated, the more I was able to set that comparison aside and focus on Surfer Blood as their own distinct entity.

“Astro Coast,” their debut LP, was released in January on Kanine Records – it was out last year in the U.K. – and it is a solid album from front to back. There are a few missteps and lulls here and there, but overall a high level of energy is ignited with opening track “Floating Vibes” and is maintained throughout.

“Floating Vibes” is one of the standout tracks from the album, and is perhaps the most Pavement-like of the bunch. The lyrics from singer John Paul Pitts focus on bidding farewell to a friend who is leaving Florida for the west coast, telling him, “I wasn’t disappointed at all/Cause you’ll be back again.” This theme is echoed throughout “Astro Coast,” where conflict and anxiety is met by a self-assured swagger, but one that never seems rock solid.

The second track is “Swim,” which was their breakout single last year, and one that deserves all the praise heaped upon it. Waves of reverb envelop the crunchy guitar riffs and catchy melodies, as Pitts wonders “On whom can you depend?” before deciding to “Swim to reach the end.”

Throughout the rest of the album, the group mixes in these upbeat rockers with more contemplative tracks, like “Slow Jabroni,” a slower, fuzzed-out builder, or “Anchorage,” a nostalgic longing for escape, where Pitts assures us that once we’ve gotten away from this mess, “We’ll be alright, I know.”

The album is not perfect, seen in tracks like “Harmonix,” which reaches almost to the five-minute mark, and yet fails to reach any sort of satisfactory peak. “Take It Easy,” with a Vampire Weekend-esque opening, is pleasant enough, but feels a little too “light” in comparison to the rest of the album.

Surfer Blood gains major points back by referencing David Lynch in “Twin Peaks,” as a tale of sexual frustration is built around watching Lynch’s television series on a couch in Syracuse and renting his film “Blue Velvet,” as Pitts sings, “Why is everything a chore?” and “If I’d known all your ghosts/I never would have come so far.”

Overall this is a very impressive debut album, and one that seems to be much more thought out and well constructed than some other buzzed-about albums of the past few months. I wouldn’t quite put them anywhere near the ranks of Pavement or Dinosaur Jr. – yet. Give them a few more years and I wouldn’t be surprised to see them nearing that level of critical praise.

Surfer Blood play Schubas in Chicago on Wednesday, March 10th and open for Mission of Burma at the High Noon Saloon in Madison on Friday, April 9th.

Buy: Surfer Blood – Astro Coast | Surfer Blood Astro Coast Digital ($5)

Wilco will be live webcasting their show at Overture Hall in Madison on Saturday, February 20th. The show, which is already sold out, will be available via WilcoWorld.net beginning at 8:30pm CST.

By Tyler Fassnacht

Now I don’t have the most experience with electronica/DJ concerts, so Daedelus’ show at the Majestic was somewhat of a new experience. I had gotten his album “Denies the Day’s Demise” and I was a huge fan, so him along with Nosaj Thing sounded like a pretty great show.

The show got off to a little bit of a rocky start. I was under the impression it was going to start at nine, however the first band, Jogger, came out a little after ten. Whether this was some sort of error on my part in misreading the time, or they just started really damn late, I am still not sure. Since it was a Monday night, I was not looking forward to a late night, but I ended up getting one anyway.

Jogger was made up of two guys, one played guitar, the other DJed and they both sang. The music turned out to be atmospheric, noisy electronica music, which sounded like I might have enjoyed it a little more coming through my headphones at home.

Up next was Nosaj Thing, who I actually was familiar with. He played a non-stop flow of music, transitioning everything into each other so as not to have a moment of silence where people couldn’t dance. His glitchy beats and cool samples were really good for the first thirty minutes, but he went on for about an hour. Towards the end he started remixing hip-hop songs, which I thought his set could have done without.

By the time Daedelus came out, it was midnight. Fancily dressed, and acting very cordial, he came off sounding polite, which was something that few people did at the venue, as the majority of people drunkenly danced into everyone else’s space. Daedelus opened with a remix of Pure Imagination from Willy Wonka, which transitioned into a mix of Only You by Portishead. After that though, I lost recognition of what he was doing. I was a big fan of a lot of Daedelus’ songs on his records, but I think I forgot that his main duty was DJ, so he mostly just played repetitive, bass-heavy electronica so that everyone could dance. He was quite good at what he was doing, but around twelve thirty I was just too tired to stay.

All the musicians at the show performed well and I liked a lot of the music that was played, but I think the combination of it being a Monday night, it starting so late, the crowd being wasted and generally pretty weird (I am talking a lot of uncomfortable touching) and me not really being in the biggest dancing mood, made the show a little bit of a let down. Personally, I think raves should be kept to the weekends.

Buy: Daedelus