Albums for After Midnight #001: Jon Hopkins - Insides [2009; Domino]

(Entire album here.)

The first in our series of Albums for After Midnight is Insides by Jon Hopkins.  It was his third LP, released in 2009 on Domino Records and you can listen to the whole thing in the embedded playlist above! Yessir!

DEMO #001: Kate Farquharson - Chronological

The first in our series of reader submitted demos is a group of self described "works in progress", entitled Chronological, by 16 (yes, sixteen) year old Laandaaner, Kate Farquharson.

The stripped bare piano/vocals arrangements are immediately more interesting and less saccharine than many of Kate's already successful peers.  The bucketloads of talent required to produce music like this at such a young age is just spilling out of these no-more-than-2-mins songs.  Have a listen yourself...

Chronological by katefarquharson






Demos or any music you want to send us can be sent to thebreadcrumbtrail@live.com, or alternatively find us on Facebook.  Don't be shy!

Flaming Lips and The Boredom of the Gummy Skull.

From straggly, semi-anarcho punks who popped to psychedelic smilers whose bopping alchemy has just about funded the darn kookiest of mood swings in music - and let's face it, there's been a few - Oklahoma's fi(e)n(d)est, the Flaming Lips are well and truly back! And by "well and truly" I mean "not at all" and by "back" I mean, "have self-consciously resurfaced with semi-regressive funk-noize shite that would be universally slated if it wasn't the work of the "Laming Fips" And you know what? It wasn't even!

You see, if, like the BNP's tentative Putney representative (Stern) John Lennon, you "read the Sun today, oh boy" or, to be more accurate, "three weeks ago on Pitchfork after a particularly half-hearted wank" you'll probably have read a story about Wayne Coyne and Co. spontaneously combusting deciding to unleash a minus-yer-thumb handful of  Gummi Skulls - jellified "sweetie" heads effectively (oh-er) - containing individual USB sticks featuring "new and original Flaming Lips material" ("not actual quote" - you can quote "me" on that).

"To see or not to see (Clare Balding naked). That is the equestrian" - Kaiser Wilhelm Shakespeare II

That is, dearest Breeder fans: non-edible memory sticks containing four new songs nestling deep with wholly-edible confectionary craniums, not to mention personally sold at a local record store by "Wee One" Coyne himself. How heartfelt and unManny-like of him! (Manny once done the exact opposite during a 1996 coke binge in Leeds city centre - but more on that later). 

Not only that, Coyne personally tracked - tracked! - his movements from "concept" to recording to production to car to store to dollar for die-hard fans (inc. Bruce "What you baking about?" Willis) to a) hype up, b) froth over and c) bug-eyedly revere in theory deep within the barkiest, fruit-loopiest recesses of Twitter and beyond (cubby-holes the world over). 

Gadzooks, like! Tell yer sister! Marvin Gaye's ghost! 

In short (cake): Wayne Coyne, you crazy neo-Rasta magician man, man! 

What is this? Christmas on the m00n? Not again, Shirley?

"I'm delirious and don't call me so early!" - Shirley Temple, Ritz London, 1972

And even THAT is beside the point! So what is the point you may ask? Well, I'll tell you! Courtesy of the interweb-super-why-way we've been flung four predominantly instrumental "vignettes" (best appreciated with fucked on wine) beginning with the "sonic niece to Bitches Brew-era Miles Davis" 'Drug Chart' - a real slow-burning Ceres-climber featuring sparse sub-dub, muffled vox and one of the most tolerable chorusless choruses in muzak (i.e. the piss-stained Parisian elevators of the unconscious, yegedme?).

There is even - no shit! - hints of loveless loveliness in the scantily-clad vein of recent degenerations throughout, despite the fact this opener stands as the most distracting part-Gorillaz, part-Tortoise flukes in the Flips wheedling back catalogue (not really a good thing, overall). You see, once a song has more emptiness than hard-to-come-by, altogether precious concete-mixed moments in Lippy thyme, you know it's time to get off the flamin' bus - for all in tents and porposes, you understand. 

So, as we stand, one non-song (hic!) down and the initial reaction of your reviewer? "Dis shit be something of a Ulrika moment gone wrong, k? A would-be genius brainstorm gone crappy. A self-satisified piece of shit that I don't know if I could be arsed "reviewing" because it's that shit and tedious and making me hate the Flaming Lips for being so incompetent and hasty with this incompetence). 

That is the initial allergic reaction of your reviewer. 

"The other three songs aren't great. In fact, they remind me of strung-out visits to uncle's house every Sunday when I was a youngster. The house smelled like impending death and crap music" - Brian Coney, Mediocrity Sufferer/Actual Flaming Lips (RIP) Fan, bereave it or not!

All yokes aside, it turns out the USB sticks were contained in Gummi mini-vaginas at the top of the skull. Smart move, guys. Next time: put GOOD MUSIC IN YOUR VAGINAS!

"The Flaming Lips - Turns Out It Was A Yeast Infection" - Rosemary Shrager

EARTOTHEGROUND: Death Grips - Ex-Millitary Mixtape

<<Oh no, he's been resurrected!
Get up ... get up ... get up ... get up ... get up ... get up ... get up ... get up ... get up ... get up ... get up ... get up ... get up ... get up ... get up ... get up ... get up ... get up ... get up ... get up ... get up ... get up ... get up ... get up ... get up ... get up ... get up ... get up ... get up ...
Zombie Holocaust in seconds>>

Fitting sentiments at this time of year, by anyone's standards.  Death Grips is Zach Hill's noise-hop collaboration with fellow Sacramentoites that, for the life of me, I cannot seem to identify (answers on a postcard...).

"Spk n abbrvs cuz rl lyf convo moves 2 slowwwwlllyyyy."

Death Grips is a musical Moebius strip that makes you feel like you're playing some kind of real life hip-hop Portal ... in a dream ... or in any case that's the precise image conjured up by the song Culture Shock:
"You need to vibrate higher (... so you can capture the opening of the portal that connects this earth of 3d to the one earth of 4d or 5d, going to the 5d)" :
"Lightworker's (0:50) is a spiritual social networking community for all people seeking to connect with other lightworker's, spiritual seekers, star seeds, wanderers, indigo children, and multi-dimensional beings. The World is entering a new dimension of love, truth and light."


The whole exercise is fairly mind blowing, and the production is as dark and choppy as anything Zach Hill's done, even if it's not entirely different-prime-number-every-bar time signatures, like some of his previous.

Not that this is surprising, even Bygones (see 3:29 onwards for [potential] greatest riff of all time) showed a more restrained style than his work with Hella, and his collab' with Wavves was practically minimalist compared to that.  In Death Grips ... there's not even a drum kit on all of the songs, but you can always hear his signature chops in the samples and the general aggressivity of the drumlines alongside the weird, scratchy, rhythmic synth work and effects the likes of which we've heard in a lot of his solo stuff ... I genuinely love the man.



THE DEATH GRIPS EX-MILLITARY MIXTAPE IS OUT ON 27.04.2011 (Immediately after completion of the Lightworker's year of transformation) AND IS GOING TO KNOCK YOUR BLOCK OVER.

GET IT HERE, ALONG WITH DOWNLOADS AND LOADS AND LOADS OF BOSS BOSS STUFF.



"Gaga can't handle this shit."

EARTOTHEGROUND: Prefuse 73 - The Only She Chapters

Speaking of Prefuse 73, here's a free album taster download for his forthcoming release The Only She Chapters, out on Monday.

The Only Hand to Hold (Featuring Shara Warden) is very much a development and aggrandisement of the haunting, vocal driven ambient arrangements á la P73's Diamond Watch Wrists project with Zach Hill.

In fact, the album in general, following on from 2009's brighter, much more head-bounceable Forest of Oversensitivity, extrapolates more from Diamond Watch Wrists than previous P73 releases.

There is a distinct focus on out-of-focus layers and textures, and album opener, The Only Recollection of Where Life Stopped is bona fide noise.  The entire album is replete with clicking, grinding, dripping, bipping, booping, clacking ... melodic and rhythmic, and sometimes neither ... both sampled and synthesized.  Plonk this alongside samples of oriental string instruments and melodic percussion, all layering together within layer upon layer of background textures ... some tracks are pure exercises in texture, see The Only Direction in Concrete, featuring Zola Jesus ... get some top notch collaborations (mostly female vocalists), with P73 at the helm who, chaotic as the album is, embues it with a progression which never seems lost or confused.

Great album!

Release Date: 25.04.2011

MIX: Baconhead - Kid's TV Mix

Baconhead's new mix is of a Kid's Tv Theme ...

Anybody recognise any of the samples?  Can't quite put my finger on ... any of them ...

Anyway, quality scrunched up beats from porcine craniums Ebola and Autobee right here ... includes new music from the men in question, as well as music from BCT favourites Prefuse 73 and Global Goon, and plenty more chunks of chunky ear fun.

Baconhead - Kid's Tv Mix by Wrong_Music on Mixcloud

EARTOTHEGROUND: sleepingdog - With Our Heads in the Clouds and Our Hearts in the Fields

With Our Heads in the Clouds and Our Hearts in the Fields is the third full length sleepingdog album, the latest noise of the collaboration between Adam Wiltzie of Stars of the Lid (BCT ep. 11) and The Dead Texan (BCT ep. 5) and Belgian singer Chantal Acda (you can listen to the whole thing BELOW) is released this coming Monday (25th April) on Gizeh records.
Underlying With Our Heads... is Wiltzie's everpresent trademark orchestral drone, and the overall effect of its coupling with Acda's so-dreamy-they-might-not-actually-be-real-after-all vocals really does almost make the use of the word "ethereal" too obvious to use in reference to any of sleepingdog's releases.  And yet, it's something rarely avoided...
This is an album where all Wiltzie's best talents for creating understated, deep-set soundscapes are put to work in various fairly disparate ways.  At times these almost engulf Acda's manipulated vocals, such as on album opener Untitled Ballad of You and Me, and at other times, the relative crispness of the vocal production, with the higher level of the vocals in the mix lends particular emphasis to the lyrics, such as on first single off the album, He Loved to See the World Through His Camera.
The natural quality of Acda's voice, and Wiltzie's long-established knack for unwittingly powerful arrangements make for a record of such intense warmth, that if you threw it on a bonfire ... emmm ... well ... depending on what format it was in, it would probably melt ... but for the sake of a metaphor, everybody would probably have to step back a bit ...

Anyway ... listen to it for yourself ...

SLEEPINGDOG - With Our Heads in the Clouds and Our Hearts in the Fields by Gizeh

Release Date: 25.04.2011