Panda Bear contributed to “Things Fall Apart,” a track from the “mysterious” ATP-bound UK producer Zomby’s forthcoming Dedication. No word if the song title’s a Chinua Achebe or Yeats reference or if it just is. Listen:
South London producer SBTRKT landed on our must-see of SXSW 2011 list based on his myriad singles, EPs, and remixes, and this July he releases his first collection of songs in the LP format with a self-titled debut via Young Turks. It’s first single swims out of production bathed in UK garage and post-dubstep waters, with an assist (most notably vocally) from Swedish electro-pop troupe Little Dragon. “Wildfire” is up for download here, as is a longer SBTRKT-related mix and some of those prior singles and remixes, for further study.
In 2007 I wrote a brief, less-than-positive review of Hella’s There’s No 666 In Outer Space, the record where the Sacramento noise-rock duo expanded to a quintet and started sounding like a rootsy Mars Volta. It appeared in SPIN. The guys gamely turned the pith into a t-shirt. My issue with There’s No 666 was (what I saw as) the aimlessness created by those extra members — i.e. the shift didn’t seem necessary. So then, four years later, it’s great to be able to announce that Hella have a new album on the horizon that finds the core of guitarist Spencer Seim and drummer extraordinaire Zach Hill back as a streamlined, well-oiled twosome. As of today the 10-song album has no title. Ditto this song. But you can still listen to it just fine. And it shreds.
Shearwater and Minus Story affiliate (BTW Class of ‘08) multi-instrumental singer/songwriter Jordan Geiger has made a second collection of songs under his Hospital Ships moniker, titled Lonely Twin and due this summer. “Reprise” is one if its energetic singles — think Ben Gibbard fronting an uplifting field song dressed in the rousing, blasted fuzz of Neutral Milk Hotel’s “Holland, 1945″ — and its video is set to Jordan’s home movies, “spanning roughly 1948-1981.” Nostalgia: