On the final night of the Hopscotch Music Festival, our buds at Kings curated an eclectic show that featured two recordings we have already shared (Moon Duo and Boogarins), a superb set from “house” band Birds of Avalon, Kid Millions, and another very special international guest, Mdou Moctar. Hailing from a small village in Niger, Moctar has received international acclaim as one of the best-known Tuareg guitarists. If you’re not familiar with the Saharan brand of rock music, or you have no idea what that means, let me put it more simply: this guy shreds like Jimi Hendrix. His latest LP, Ilana, the Creator was recorded in Detroit, and is already making its way onto early “best of 2019” lists for obvious reasons. Moctar’s work is special not only for its technical virtuosity but for his willingness to expand upon the genre’s conventions, as well as focus on original music over standards and covers. These four songs will give you a taste of what Moctar is about, but really, do yourself a favor and head to Sahel Sounds to get educated not only about his work, but the variety of 21st century African artists they represent. (Jesse Jarnow wrote an excellent piece about the label here). And keep your eye on those “best of 2019” lists — I know Mdou Moctar is making mine.
I recorded this set with onstage Schoeps MK5 microphones, MBHO microphones back at the soundboard, and a soundboard feed. The sound is excellent. Enjoy!
Thanks to Mdou Moctar and his management team for letting us share the recording.
After watching three experimental/improvprojects at the Three Lobed / WXDU Annual Ritual of Summoning, this spectacular day pivoted with a return to some straight-ahead punk. Cold Cream is a project from Triangle punk lifers from bands such as Flesh Wounds, Pipe, and Tegucigalpan, so despite their first record’s arrival in 2018, they own a room like the vets they are.
Here at Kings, Cold Cream energized the room with their erudite, politically-charged songs (not sure how many punk bands work “Dulce et decorum est / Pro patria mori” into their lyrics, but they do). Given the political climate in North Carolina, “Rat Fucker” (about gerrymandering and other forms of voter disenfranchisement) particularly resonated. But really, none of that would matter if the band didn’t, you know, rock, and that they most assuredly do. Tune in and turn this up loud.
I recorded this set in the same manner as the other sets of the day, with Schoeps mics onstage, MBHO mics at the board, and a soundboard feed. The sound quality is excellent. Enjoy!
Tracks 01 [intro] 02 Anti-Fi 03 Eichmann In Jerusalem 04 First They Came> 05 Angie 06 Wage Theft 07 Decorate 08 Rat Fucker 09 In Carrz 10 Objects In Mirror 11 See You On the Somme 12 Cactus Wife 13 Shit Bird 14 Fasting
Cold Cream is:
Mara Thomas – Vocals Clarq Blomquist – Drums Laura King – Bass Ron Liberti – Guitar
The tenth annual Woodsist Festival not only found Kevin Morby reprising his role as bassist in Woods during their set, but it highlighted Morby’s continued growth as an artist (and in popularity) since those days.
This stripped down set, featuring Morby with saxophonist Cheme Gastelum, focused on material from this year’s Oh My God, a record that, as its name suggests, focuses more heavily on spiritual and religious issues than Morby has in the past. Those songs were joined by “Harlem River” (of course), featuring Jarvis Taveniere, Meg Duffy and Jeremy Earl (on drums) to make it a full-band effort. But Morby saved his most impactful number for last: “Beautiful Strangers,” Morby’s 2016 tribute to the Pulse Nightclub shooting victims in Orlando, joined by Katie Crutchfield on vocals. It felt like a fitting tribute to people whose lives had ended at an event and a place not so dissimilar from this: one of community, positivity, and love.
I recorded this set with Evan’s soundboard feed, combined with a little bit of Schoeps MK5 microphones back at the board for ambiance. The sound is excellent. Enjoy!
Thanks to Kevin Morby for granting permission to post the set, and Woodsist for letting us record the festival.
For the tenth annual Woodsist Festival, label founder and Woods vocalist/guitarist/founder Jeremy Earl brought the proceedings from the West Coast — where they enjoyed several successful years at Big Surprise — to upstate New York. Here in the tiny town of Accord, on the grounds of Arrowood Farm-Brewery, Woodsist showed what the purpose of a music festival ought to be.
It was: a cloudless day, not too warm; a gathering place where families with small kids, curious locals, and heads from near and far could converge to enjoy music, in an environment that welcomed all; sonically, a confluence of like-minded artists who knew each other well, who’ve cross-pollinated each other’s work in many cases and will do so again, and who shared many stages on this day. It was, in many ways, the perfect festival.
Woods has been one of the signature New York bands of this era since its inception, particularly so during this festival’s lifetime. They’re part of a rarified group whose shows are a virtual guarantee of something unique, that always leave you thinking about their music differently by the time you leave. It felt right, then, that this festival brought together the “2009 lineup,” including Kevin Morby and G Lucas Crane. Likewise, the setlist reflected the band’s best-known music from that time period, from “Rain On” and “Blood Dries Darker” to the classic one-two sequence of “jam songs,” “Bend Beyond” followed by “I Was Gone” (albeit, a short version this time).
Whatever its original intention, this ended up being more than a highlight set for this era of Woods. Several of these players were part of David Berman’s backing band for his final project, Purple Mountains, for which Jeremy Earl and Jarvis Taveniere were also producers. Berman’s suicide left a hole in music that can never be filled. For the many of us who had hoped to see him play music again (as was the plan with the Purple Mountains lineup), it was a generous and rare gift for the Woods crew to play two of his songs to close out the set. The first, “All My Happiness Is Gone” (with Little Wings‘ Kyle Field on vocals), was one of the darkest and most sobering songs on an LP full of them. Hearing it live for the first time in this context didn’t exactly change the song’s tone, but maybe it showed, in a small way, what could have been.
The set closed with Morby on vocals for “Random Rules,” from Silver Jews’ 1998 masterpiece American Water. It is, in my opinion, a perfect Berman song, a damaged plea to a former lover, whose series of brilliant couplets still make you crack a smile still on the thousandth listen, even with the melancholy at their core. For all the ache at its core, though, the song ends on a note of hope, however temporary: “Honey, we’ve got two lives to live tonight.” Despite the circumstances, it was a joy to hear Berman’s words sung from a stage again.
I recorded this set with a soundboard feed provided by Evan, and Schoeps MK5 microphones in the FOH tent. It’s an excellent capture of the day. I hope you enjoy it — and please support this festival in the coming years!
Thanks to Woods for allowing us to record and share the set. Other recordings from the festival will be made available for those artists who permit.
Tracks 01 Out of the Eye 02 Blood Dries Darker 03 Find Them Empty 04 Pushing Onlys 05 Rain On 06 To Clean 07 Bend Beyond 08 I Was Gone 09 Suffering Season> 10 Military Madness 11 [banter/break] 12 All My Happiness Is Gone [Purple Mountains]* 13 Random Rules [Silver Jews]$
Joined by Kevin Morby (bass) and G Lucas Crane (vox, other) all set
* w/ Kyle Field on vocals $ w/ Kevin Morby on vocals
Fresh off a longstanding stint as the bassist in Bardo Pond, Clint Takeda has emerged with a new solo project, Double Wig. This show at the annual Three Lobed / WXDU Annual Ritual of Summoning during Hopscotch was most folks’ first introduction to the project, and Clint made sure to keep us all enthralled with an improvisational piece powered by a number of effects that rendered the sound of Clint’s bass almost unrecognizable as one. These are still early days for Double Wig, with only a few performances or even mentions out there in the wild, so we are excited to see what Clint does with the project.
I recorded this set in the same manner as the other shows of the day, with Schoeps MK5c’s on stage, a soundboard feed, and MBHO mics and the Aerco preamp back at the board. The sound quality is excellent. Enjoy!
Let’s get real here: You already know we love Garcia Peoples. I’m getting this recording to you less than 24 hours after it occurred. So if you want to know our opinions on GP and their shows, read any number of other reviews on this site. I’m here to tell you the basics:
This is part of a month-long residency at Nublu . Buy tix to the other shows here.
These shows celebrate the release of their latest LP on Beyond Beyond is Beyond, One Step Behind. Buy it here.
Garcia Peoples are good peoples, and they rule. See items #1 and #2.
I recorded this set with Schoeps MK4Vs on the right side toward the front. The sound is excellent. Enjoy!
Among the bounty of riches at every Hopscotch Music Festival is the variety of punk shows that get put on, both throughout the day show circuit and during the official evening events. Out of a particularly good crop this year, one of my very favorite punk acts was the Atlanta band GG King, who played both this official evening set at Kings and then a day show set at Neptune’s (the downstairs room of the same club) the following day.
This set shows the band at its best, playing high-velocity, hardcore-inflected punk. Frontman Greg “GG” King hails from the defunct hometown favorite the Carbonas, who were at it from 2001 to 2009, and his eponymous band continues many of the things people loved about his last band. In particular, both had a certain pop sensibility that, without making either act cheesy or soft, give them appeal beyond their core audience. This night’s song selection should satisfy both the new fan and the veteran alike; you can hear many of the studio versions on these rehearsal demos streaming on their label’s bandcamp page. Once you’re done here, I recommend you stream your way over to Scavenger of Death Records and discover the rest of what GG King has to offer.
I recorded this set with MBHO microphones into the warm n’ fuzzy Aerco preamp. My man Dave Schwentker was kind enough to track this one out so we could present it to you. Enjoy!
We’ve seen our man Ryley Walker hit the stage with David Grubbs as recently as the final night of his Union Pool residency earlier this year — that night with Ryan Jewell and C. Spencer Yeh also in the mix. But as we all know, one Ryley show rarely bears much resemblance to another, particularly when it comes to the panoply of collaborations in which he engages. If RW isn’t the hardest working man in music, he’s got to be up there, touring constantly, opening for other acts, playing band gigs, solo gigs, and stuff like this — all within the span of a week or even a single day.
This set at Trans-Pecos came just a few days after his sojourn at Hopscotch Music Festival (look for those shows soon) where played yet another collab show followed by a full band set within a span of hours. Walker is a professed fan of Grubbs, and the mind-meld between the two musicians easily bridged any generational divides on this night, as they took turns leading and following, creating a dual-guitar piece that kept the packed room in contemplative silence.
Speaking of Ryley Walker and collaborations, he has a record coming up on Thrill Jockey on November 8 with Charles Rumback. I think you should buy it.
This recording is straight off the Trans-Pecos digital soundboard, and it’s clean as a whistle. Enjoy!
Planting Moon, of Asheville, NC, didn’t quite debut at this year’s Three Lobed / WXDU Annual Ritual of Summoning, but it’s fair to say this was a key performance by a new band — one that landed the right way on these ears. This combo of guitarists Sarah Louise and Nathan Olson, together with drummer Thom Nguyen, takes full of advantage of these players’ improvisational talents, with Louise adding occasional vocals to her heady guitar interplay with Olson.
This was one of my favorite sets of this year’s Hopscotch — not only are Planting Moon excellent, but their gigs to date have been largely local affairs. Along with the marquee national and international acts (who all play New York eventually), this festival is a chance to see the best acts coming out of North Carolina, particularly the vibrant scenes in Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill and Asheville. Trust me, Planting Moon check that box in a big way.
I recorded this set with the same three-source setup I used throughout the day, with onstage Schoeps MK5s carrying the load, together with a soundboard feed and MBHO mics back at the soundboard to capture the room feel. This one sounds great, folks. Enjoy!
Sarah Louise (guitar/vox) Nathan Olson (guitar) Thom Nguyen (drums)
It’s too early for Planting Moon to have any recorded output, but you ought to support them by visiting their Facebook page.Don’t skip the members’ otherwork as well.
Not so long after catching an infrequent Wooden Shjips sighting at Brooklyn Bowl a few months back, we were lucky enough to see Ripley Johnson with his other (no less important) project Moon Duo close out the Hopscotch Music Festival in Raleigh, NC at our fave spot there, Kings.
Most exciting about this set was the fact that it comes just before the release of the band’s latest album, Stars Are the Light, a record that finds Sanae Yamada and Ripley wading further into the dance music arena. While you won’t find Moon Duo headlining a big EDM festival anytime soon, the vibe and texture of the new material has an airier lean to it. Yamada has cited disco as an inspiration for these songs, and you can hear it from the album’s title song as well as many of the new numbers that made their way into this night. If you’ve heard the second volume of Occult Architecture – billed the “light” side of that double album – then think of Stars Are the Light as the next logical evolution of that material. It’s a heck of a lot of fun to anytime, but it proved an especially fine coda to a multi-night music festival for me. Rounding out the new material, and the set, was a curveball cover, in this case Alan Vega’s “Jukebox Babe,” which the band released as a single last year.
Tracks
01 Flying
02 The World and the Sun
03 Cold Fear
04 I Been Gone
05 Eternal Shore
06 Fever Night
07 Night Beat
08 White Rose
09 Jukebox Babe [Alan Vega]
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