• Videos: Passion Pit - Sleepyhead + The Reeling / Grizzly Bear - Two Weeks

Enjoy ;)

• Off Topic:

• Tipp:

• Track: Phoenix RMX

For free! Phoenix - Lisztomania (Holy Ghost! loves Paris remixomania)
Via Fairtilizer.

• Video: Tortoise - Prepare Your Coffin

• Video: Modest Mouse - Satellite Skin

• Video: Whitest Boy Alive - Golden Cage

Ja ich weiss irgendwie verkommt der tonband Blog immer mehr zum Videoblog. Aber was soll ich machen, kaum Zeit zum Musikhören geschweige denn zum Schreiben. Und Videos sind ja auch etwas schönes oder? Ausserdem gibts wirkungsvolle Sounds im mp3 Archiv. So warte ich dringlichst auf das nächste Audiolicious wie ihr ;)

• Videos: Kid 606 + Amadou and Mariam + The Mae Shi

RE-MOVED to videoband

• Tipp: Chromatic Flights - Favorite Cat EP

A long time coming, the third Monotonik release from Chromatic Flights, aka Florida's Kyle Wyss, debuts after some heavy buzz for his main project, the two-man band Blind Man's Colour, online.

The band signed to Kanine Records (Grizzly Bear, Mommy And Daddy), we're delighted to be continuing to put out his solo material for Monotonik fans.

Continuing from his first and second free releases on Monotonik, 'Memories From The Audible Color Wheel' and 'Heavy Stars Will Fall', respectively, this new EP continues to layer in gorgeous mixes of shoegazing melodies and electronic goodness.

mp3: Chromatic Flights - Favorite Cat

mono211.com
myspace.com/kylescolour
info

• Video:

• Album des Monats April: Bill Callahan - Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle

"I used to be darker/ Then I got lighter/ Then I got dark again." With these three simple lines from "Jim Cain", the opening track of his lovelorn new album, the always-succinct Bill Callahan sums up his tempestuous musical trajectory. For those of you keeping score at home, "darker" seems to refer to most of his output as Smog, when his songwriting often succumbed to the weary dread his dead-planet of a voice exudes like gravity. The lightening occurred over the course of A River Ain't Too Much to Love, his final record as Smog, and Woke on a Whaleheart, his first post-Smog effort. On these records, romantic gratitude gradually replaced romantic pessimism. Bill Callahan was happy; at peace. But it wasn't to last. The slumbering beast of love, "the lion walking down city streets," awoke, and it was pissed. He got dark again.

"I started telling the story/ Without knowing the end." And he's still doing so. Over the past two decades, Callahan's music has chronicled his unique, troubling insights about responsibility, faith, and love. The darkness that falls over Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle does not make it a Smog record-- it is an uncommonly gentle darkness that sounds light at first blush. Smog's malevolence seemed like a sweeping indictment of human nature, but here, Callahan's lyrics feel intensely personal. The record, an evident break-up affair, has such a strong air of private conversation that listening to it feels like eavesdropping; the second-person pronouns sail right past us to strike the target of the absent beloved. The reverent intimacy can become almost uncomfortable, as Callahan proffers up his words in the same way the devout handle rosaries.

Like Whaleheart, Eagle is kitted out with the instrumentation-- cellos and violins, French horns, pump organs, electric pianos-- that he embraced post-Smog. On Whaleheart, such embellishments were rangy and shambling; here they're loosely clenched, as if Callahan built the music to hold him together. Eagle addresses a specific-sounding lost love, but more broadly, it does what every Callahan record does: It takes a long hard look at who he is and what he believes at this moment. As a result, it finds him questioning the truths he discovered on Whaleheart, as when, on "Eid Ma Clack Shaw", he dreams the perfect song and scribbles it down in the middle of the night, discovering in his notebook the next morning the nonsense words of the song's title.

This self-portrait is so complex and subtle that it's tempting to skip discussing the actual music, which speaks so eloquently for itself. Some of the finest, most varied arrangements of Callahan's career are here. Wafting strings and contrapuntal soprano vocals render "Rococo Zephyr" as buoyant and lilting as its namesake. On "Eid Ma Clack Shaw", silvery electric guitar moves up and down staccato piano. "My Friend" and "All Thoughts are Prey to Some Beast" are almost like folk-Krautrock, with interlocked motifs billowing out over rigid pulses. Best of all is how the clenched arrangements open out into flowing, tender catharsis, and these are the moments you'll come to anticipate-- wait for the beatific chorus that bears Callahan's dense voice improbably high above the sinuous strains of "The Wind and the Dove", or the effervescent strings casting periodic surges of light through "Jim Cain".

Like the birds he loves so well, Callahan's albums find him alighting momentarily on precarious perches and naming what he sees. By the time we hear the music, he seems to have flown on again. His vantage from Eagle is one of textured ambivalence; his images split and shimmer like double-exposures, immediately releasing an obvious meaning quickly followed by a subtler one that equivocates the first. He's "still as a river could be," and a "child of linger on." He used to be "sort of blind," but now he can "sort of see." On "Faith/Void", he decides that it's time to "put God away," to no longer strive for his "peace in the light." Twenty years in, and Bill Callahan appears to be tearing up everything he's believed and starting from scratch, armed with the terrifying wisdom of knowing that one knows nothing, and searching for meaning regardless. He's resigned but heroically presses on. The void looms, but the music keeps it barely at bay.

Review by Brian Howe on pitchfork.com

• Ranking April 2009

7.5
Bill Callahan - Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle
The Gentleman Losers - Dustland
The Horrors - Primary Colours
Lawrence English – A Colour For Autumn
Balmorhea - All Is Wild All Is Silent
65daysofstatic - Escape From New York
7
Atom™ - Liedgut
Omar S - Fabric 45
Maximilian Hecker - One Day
Pendle Coven – Self Assessment
Sophia - There Are No Goodbyes
6.5
Stimming - Reflections
10-20 - 10-20
Merzbow - Yurikamome
Del The Funky Homosapien - Funk Man
6
Death Cab For Cutie - The Open Door EP
Hildur Gudnadottir - Without Sinking
5.5
Depeche Mode - Sounds Of The Universe
Montag - Hibernation
The Mountain Goats & John Vanderslice - Moon Colony Bloodbath
Masha Qrella - Speak Low
5
Pj Harvey & John Parish - A Woman A Man Walked By
Various - Not Given Lightly