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Save the Date! Other Music & Dig For Fire's SXSW Lawn Party
Shout Out Louds: Free Song Download
Here's a little preview of Shout Out Louds' new full-length, Work (out February 23), via this free download of "Fall Hard." For their third album (and second for Merge), this Swedish combo recorded at Seattle's Bear Creek Studio with producer Phil Ek (Band of Horses, Fleet Foxes, Modest Mouse), the result of which finds the band scaling back the string flourishes and turning in their most focused outing of infectious, jangling songs and indie pop anthems to date. Efterklang: Free Song & Back Catalog Sale
Free song download of "Modern Drift," taken from Efterklang's forthcoming album, Magic Chairs, out on Tuesday, February 23. With a new home on 4AD, the Danish quartet has reined in much of the sweeping grandiosity of earlier efforts, delivering a far more intimate, albeit still majestic set of orchestrated pop. Easily their most accessible, song-oriented album to date, this one is sure to find wide appeal, from fans of Sigur Ros' dramatic atmospherics to the Dirty Projectors' avant-chamber rock. In celebration of the new album, Other Music Digital will be offering Efterklang's entire back catalog on the Leaf Label at special reduced prices! We've been big fans of the group since they debuted six years ago, and have featured Efterklang in many of our Other Music Updates, from which the reviews below are culled from. There's no better time than now for the uninitiated to get acquainted with this great band as well as for longtime fans to fill in some holes in their collection. But don't wait too long, these prices are only good through March 22nd.
Released in late 2009, Danish electric/acoustic post-pop experimentalists Efterklang expand upon their previous 2007 release Parades, with a live version of that album utilizing the Danish National Chamber Orchestra. Performing Parades showcases the group's always multi-layered, lush, emotional and delicate compositions in a bigger, richer context. Recorded in Copenhagen during the fall of 2008, the orchestra helps them expand their palette, fully creating a bridge between modern composition, classical pop, and glitchy post-rock. With a wide array of instruments from laptops to violas, trombones, trumpets, drums, piano, and the absorbing use of a chorus of male and female voices, the beauty of their songwriting truly comes into view. These guys are my favorite in the burgeoning sub-genre that you could call indie-classical fusion, which also includes Sigur Ros, Mum, Dirty Projectors, Nico Muhly and Grizzly Bear. The concert is recorded so flawlessly that you often forget you're listening to a live show, until the crowd cheers, reminding you that it was all happening in real time. Efterklang are an amazing live band in any situation, and this show was clearly a triumph for them, and an acknowledgement of pure skill and passion. If you like your pop music string laden, emotional, and ethereal, this is for you. -Daniel Givens
Efterklang's Parades is a perfect marriage of Mum meets Broken Social Scene, interwoven with strings and marching band instruments. Breathy passages are mixed with swooning choral arias, string breakdowns and build-ups, and fluttering electronics/piano that suddenly drop down and then crescendo for what seems to be days. The album shifts to starker stuff at the halfway point with a more vivid, up-close production quality: militant dirges, almost mourning strings, more drive and even more build-ups. Parades sounds like the score to The Grinch That SAVED Christmas set in a mysterious toy village with snow capped mountains in the distance. Hey, just like the cover! -Scott Mou
Released in the spring of 2007, Efterklang's Under Giant Trees EP finds the eight-piece ensemble joined by seven additional guest vocalists and players. The result is a stark and dramatic sweeping soundscape that subtly pulls you along with its blend of classical ambience (including a men's choir) and laptop texturing. -Daniel Givens
This is Efterklang's amazing debut, which introduced the world to their richly orchestrated, electro-acoustic music. While you could tell that the band was definitely inspired by Sigur Ros (at the time of this release, Efterklang counted Sigur Ros' string section Amiina as members), Mum, and My Bloody Valentine, they re-imagined their influences into something wholly new. The tracks on Tripper range from Oval-type glitch-pop carrying the beautiful lulling vocals, to Rachel's- and Philip Glass-esque orchestral compositions, to electronic pop gems that would fit well alongside Morr Music's finest. The overall atmosphere of Tripper is stark and cold with an unexplainable underlying beauty making it the perfect soundtrack for this chilly time of year. Definitely one of 2004's best debuts and still an incredible album. -Jeremy Sponder
Efterklang originally self-released this limited EP in 2003, about a year before their acclaimed full-length debut Tripper. Clocking in at over a half-hour, Springer may not have the full orchestration of the subsequent album but you hardly notice this lapse as the band delivers a wide-open, pastoral set of songs, chock full of shimmering guitars, sad, angelic vocals, gently stroked piano, sputtering electronics and warm ambience -- a sound that continues to serve them well. -Josh Madell Recommended New Arrivals
Commonly referred to as Trio Mocotó's "white album," this 1973 release was their second full-length LP. Full of the non-stop samba grooves and goofy high spirits that were their trademark, it's notable for sporting the most stripped-down production of the three albums the band released during the 70s. Their active working association with Jorge Ben had come to an end at this point, but his fingerprints are unsurprisingly all over this album, not least on a bottom-heavy cover of his 1971 tune "Palomaris." "Desapareça, Vá, Desapareça" and particularly the brief but utterly joyous "Swinga Sambaby" have long been the main party favorites here. Ultimately, the record remains a highly listenable classic of 70s "underground" samba despite, or perhaps because of, its under-produced rough edges. -Greg Caz
Another fantastic installment in Soundway's Nigeria Special series, the jaws of many Afrobeat fans and collectors are going to drop as soon as they hit play and hear the extremely hard-to-find seven-inch version of Fela's "Who're You," (later re-recorded at Abbey Road for Fela's London Scene album), reissued here for the first time ever. It doesn't stop there, with 10 funky organ and horn-fueled scorchers that follow -- all of them never before released outside of Nigeria -- from the likes of Orlando Julius, Saxon Lee, Segun Buknor, Eric Showboy Akaeze, and lots more.
Marking the debut of new full-time band member Angela Seo (piano, synths and drum programming), and co-produced by Deerhoof's Greg Saunier, on Xiu Xiu's latest album, Dear God, I Hate Myself, Jamie Stewart's pained croon is more introspective than ever as he delves into matters of faith and despondency over a wide and often bizarre range of instrumentation, including four songs mostly arranged on a Nintendo DS.
BJ Nilsen has always been a favorite Touch operative of mine, and this latest full-length is an apt distillation of his sound to date. His last record, The Short Night, pulled into focus his amazing lightness of touch, as he carefully sculpted haunted field recordings and layered icy-cold monosynth. The results were ineffably affecting, and The Invisible City poises itself as the logical extension of those themes. Here the environmental recordings are pushed still further into the background, cloaked in dusty, buzzing synthesizers and malfunctioning oscillators. The drones that gradually trickled to life on its predecessor form the backbone of the album, giving it a doomed register Sunn O))) fans will no doubt be drawn to. When the guitar feedback drones of "Gravity Station" morph into machine noise and binary chatter there can be no doubt of the spine chilling potential of the record, and its ability to incite fear and awe from the listener. Thankfully, Nilsen calms his arsenal for the central section of the album, slipping into a gaseous ambient haze (helped by fellow Touchy Hildur Gudnadottir) which never totally disappears, fading into the album's second half like the ghost of Florian Fricke. There is something crucially human about Nilsen's productions; whether this comes from his use of the sounds around him or from his defiant compositional touch I am not sure, but it serves to make his albums incredibly listenable. Those who think ambient experimental is all horn-rimmed glasses and studied theories... well you're half right -- but try not to forget about the humanity in it all. -John Twells
Now that B'more-bred Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavilion has been deemed the leading sonic work of the times by the Village Voice's Pazz 'n' Jop poll and anointed throughout the past year in an endless procession of hipster-bait rags, it doubtless seemed the move to begin reflecting on the group's back pages via the reissue of Campfire Songs. Oddly, Campfire Songs, originally released on Catsup Plate -- one of two recordings dropped by them in 2003 -- had gone out of print. Thus this reissue, on the group's own Paw Tracks label, comes off as a rare relic of the relative salad days of Panda Bear, Avey Tare, and Deakin -- recorded as it was (in 2001) on the long-forgotten mini-disc player (plied by Geologist). The disc's stark, rockin'-on-the-porch psych represents a quite different aspect of their aesthetic journey. The five hushed and subtly shifting songs herein offer the opportunity to experiment with how far out one can go hanging on the supposed limitations of three guitars, pastoral atmospherics, and unvarnished harmonies. You can't dance to it but, for all the lyrical darkness, you could trip to the mystic. -Kandia Crazy Horse |
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Other Music Digital Top 5 Sellers - Week Ending February 14, 2010 |
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We are very excited to announce that Other Music will be in Austin next month for the 
