Posts Tagged ‘ pontiak ’

Pontiak: June 14, 2012 NYCTaper Northside Festival Showcase at 285 Kent – FLAC and MP3 Downloads + Streaming Songs

June 25, 2012
By


[Photos by Jill Harrison at For the Love of Brooklyn]

The way that the brothers Jennings, Van and Lain Carney – aka Pontiak – are able to live their lives as musicians is about as far from the New York experience as you can get. Where our musicians live in cramped apartments, borrow or rent practice space, and live near the places where they play, the Carneys record and practice their music on their own farm/studio in rural Virginia, where they decamped to after a five year stint in the Baltimore scene, where they played with compatriots like Arbouretum. The brothers’ rural location has given them flexibility to record how and what they want that their urban counterparts would surely envy. But it does mean a very long drive when you want to do a one-off show for the Northside Festival.

Given the distance involved, and the fact that the band tours much more regularly in Europe, I was honored that Pontiak agreed to co-headline our second annual Northside Festival showcase at 285 Kent. For me, Pontiak was not just a band that I liked and hoped would play a showcase; to me, it is a band that distills to its essence what is right and good about live music. Their sets are unpredictable, drawing from a deep catalog of nine releases, and they take fearless and surprising turns stylistically, even from song to song. Yes, Pontiak are unquestionably a “heavy” band, but that simple tag belies a huge range of influences you can hear in their material. They can evoke Sabbath-style riff-driven metal, stoner rock, psych rock, indie rock, southern rock and math rock, and they can even showcase a quieter, more acoustic side. The band’s most recent EP, Comecrudos, which predated this year’s excellent full-length LP Echo Ono, was a five-part piece inspired by the drive from Marathon, Texas to Phoenix, and featured guest musicians on horns and deep, penetrating psychedelic guitar musings. Echo Ono, on the other hand, “cuts out all the bullshit” (as Van Carney put it to the A.V. Club) and is a much more straight-ahead psychedelic rock album than some of their earlier work.

As a live band, it’s also fair to say the Carneys cut out all the bullshit. Up on the stage with their stripped-down selection of vintage gear cranked to ear-blistering levels, the brothers tore through this 40-minute set with few pauses or breaks. As always, the interplay between the brothers was deft and natural, and their material showed the full range of their catalog.  Although several tracks from Echo Ono were played for the first time (for me), my personal highlight was when the band slowed things down a bit to play Part III of Comecrudos. We could not have been more honored to have them on stage on our behalf.

nyctaper and I recorded this set in the same manner as the other sets of the night, with Sennheiser MKH-8040 microphones, Audio Technica microphones split wide at the stage lip, and a soundboard feed. The sound is excellent. Enjoy!

Special thanks to Pontiak, White Hills, Rhyton and EULA for playing this show and to ToddP for helping to host the event.  You can download While Hills’ set [HERE], Rhyton [HERE] and EULA [HERE].

Stream “Part III [Comecrudos]”
[audio:http://www.nyctaper.com/P2011Pontiak2010/05 Part III.mp3]

Stream “Across the Steppe”
[audio:http://www.nyctaper.com/P2011Pontiak2010/01 Across the Steppe.mp3]

Direct download of MP3 files [HERE] | Direct download of FLAC files [HERE]
email nyctaper for the location of the FLAC files

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Note: All of the material on this site is offered with artist permission, free to fans, at our expense. The only thing we ask is that you download the material directly from this site, rather than re-posting the direct links or the files on other sites without our permission. Please respect our request.

Pontiak
2012-06-14
NYCTaper Northside Festival Showcase
285 Kent
Brooklyn, NY USA

Exclusive download hosted at nyctaper.com
Recorded by nyctaper and acidjack
Produced by acidjack

Sennheiser MKH-8040 (ROC, 8ft, PAS) + Soundboard + Audio Technica 3031 (stage lip, NOS)>Sound Devices USBPre2 >> Edirol R-44 [Oade Concert Mod]>3x24bit/48kHz WAV>Audacity (mixdown)>Izotope Ozone 5 (EQ, gentle tube)>Audacity (set fades, tracking, amplify, balance, downsample)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks [Total Time 40:03]
01 Across the Steppe
02 Laywayed
03 The North Coast
04 Left With Lights
05 Part III
06 Shell Skull
07 The Expanding Sky
08 Royal Colors
09 Panoptica [short version]
10 Lions of Least

If you download this recording from NYCTaper, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT Pontiak, visit their website, and purchase their official releases, including Echo Ono from Thrill Jockey directly [here].

NYCTaper Announces 2012 Northside Festival Showcase

June 4, 2012
By

For the second year in a row, we are thrilled to be participating in the Northside Festival, which is more or less north Brooklyn’s answer to CMJ.  This year’s NYCTaper showcase will take place next Thursday, June 14 at 285 Kent on the festival’s opening night, and will feature four bands whose music we are very excited about.  Our Facebook page for the event is [HERE] and tickets can be purchased [HERE].

Co-headliners and Thrill Jockey labelmates Pontiak and White Hills are two bands I have been digging for awhile now, and I couldn’t be happier to have them on the bill.  I last checked in with Pontiak at the Memory Burn Psych Festival a couple years ago (that recording [HERE]) and since then, they have put out some excellent new material, most recently the record Echo OnoWhite Hills are fresh off the release of Frying On this Rock, which we recently got a taste of at Glasslands (recording [HERE]).  The trio has an avid following, and the recording makes it clear why.

Rhyton are a fairly new project (also on Thrill Jockey) from longtime NYC-area musicians whose other projects have been on this site. Dave Shuford, also of D. Charles Speer and the Helix (our recording of them [HERE]) and formerly of No Neck Blues Band, founded the band along with Jimmy SeiTang (Psychic Ills – our recording of them [HERE]) and Spencer Herbst (Messages, Matta Llama) to once again give voice to some of his heavier, more experimental influences that don’t find their was obviously into the Speer material.  Rhyton’s eponymous first record is a masterwork of jazz/psych experimentation, and we can’t wait to see the material in the live setting.

EULA are a Brooklyn band that we’ve caught out and about a few times (for me, most recently at Cameo Gallery (recording [HERE]). Frontwoman Alyse Lamb has established herself as one of the most compelling bandleaders of late in the local scene, and she and her bandmates will be kicking off the night with their high-energy postpunk sound.

Stream “Young” by Pontiak from the Bell House:
[audio:http://www.nyctaper.com/P2011Pontiak2010/Pontiak-Young.mp3]

Stream “Dead” by White Hills from Glasslands:
[audio:http://www.nyctaper.com/W0049WhiteHills2012/08 Dead.mp3]

Stream Rhyton’s music from their MySpace page

Stream “Maurice Narcisse” by EULA
[audio:http://www.nyctaper.com/E2020EULA2012/07 Maurice Narcisse.mp3]

We hope to see you at the show, and please grab your tickets [HERE]!

Pontiak: November 20, 2010 Bell House – FLAC and MP3 Downloads + Streaming Song

December 13, 2010
By


[Photo by Johnny]

Before the mighty Bardo Pond headlined the recent incarnation of the Memory Burn Psych Festival, heavy-rocking southerners Pontiak made sure nobody in the vicinity of the Bell House missed their louder-than-hell set. The Virginian siblings (the band is comprised of the brothers Van, Lain and Jennings Carney) opened up with one of their more accessible new numbers, the 70s-inspired “Young,” and from there, surged through several more songs from their 2010 release This Is Living, as well as classics from the rest of their catalog, including an epic closer of “Sun On Sun” segueing into “Shell Skull.” Pontiak’s music can find a variety of musical company; loose and improvisational enough to satisfy the psych rock set, but churning, riff-driven and structurally cohesive such that it won’t be lost on your average metal or rock fan, either. This set eschewed some of the quieter, more acoustic songs demonstrated on Living and some of the band’s earlier records in favor of the crowd-pleasers for, well, the kind of people who attend an event called the “Memory Burn Psych Festival”, and to great effect. Compared to on record, Van Carney’s vocals were buried most of the night under layers of guitars and drums like a distant spectre, but all the better to accentuate the vortex of guitars, bass and drums. Indeed, I was particularly gratified to see the band properly mixed by the Bell House staff on a killer system that gave full voice to their style. This was probably the most head-banging set of the evening, and for those who hadn’t crossed paths with Pontiak before, a revelation.

I recorded this set with the Schoeps microphones and a stereo soundboard feed, in the same manner as the Bardo Pond recording, and the results are equally outstanding. Enjoy!

Stream “Young”:
[audio:http://www.nyctaper.com/P2011Pontiak2010/Pontiak-Young.mp3]

Direct download of MP3 files [HERE]

Download the Complete show in FLAC [HERE].

Pontiak
2010-11-20
Bell House
Brooklyn, NY  USA

An acidjack master recording
Recorded and produced by acidjack for nyctaper.com

Equipment: Schoeps CMC6/mk41+Soundboard>Edirol R-44 [Oade Concert Mod] (24/48)
Position: DFC, pole clamped to soundboard about 9ft from floor, pointed at stacks
Mastering: 2x24bit/48kHz WAV>Audacity (set fades, mixdown, track, amplify and balance, downsample to 16/44.1)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks
1. Young
2. This is Living
3. World Wide Prince
4. Lemon Lady
5. Maker
6. Sun on Sun>Shell Skull

If you download this recording from NYCTaper, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT Pontiak, visit their website, and purchase their official releases, including Living from Thrill Jockey directly [here].

SUPPORT NYCTaper




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