nyctaper posts

The Mountain Goats have released their new EP Satanic Messiah. The 4-track EP is available in lossless formats (AIFF and FLAC) through bit torrent download. The flac files we downloaded are 55.6 MB size. The total download time for the flac folder was less than five minutes. We will remain on this torrent as an upload seed for as long as there are still people downloading.

There are also available direct downloads in compressed AAC and mp3 formats (total size 26 MB).

There are Paypal and Google checkout options for “donations” when you download this EP. Based upon our belief in the importance of the implementation of this distribution method, the quality of this music, and the quality of this artist, we donated $10 — the “acolyte” level. We strongly encourage our readers to “donate” and support this artist and this release method.

Read the NYCTaper interview of John Darnielle regarding this Mountain Goats EP [HERE].

Kimya Dawson has announced that she will return to NYC in December for a show at the Bowery Ballroom. Kimya’s show is a celebration of 10 years of sobriety. Here are the details:

Friday December 26th
Kimya Dawson’s 10 Years Off The Sauce Extravaganza!
w/ special performances by Akida Junglefoot Dawson, Malcolm Rollick, Joie DBG, Underthrust, and more!!!
@ Bowery Ballroom
New York, NY
A celebration of recovery and being alive!!!

This has not yet been posted on the Bowery site. We recorded Kimya twice already this year [here] and [here], but we are uncertain about this show, since it conflicts with the Yo La Tengo Hanukkah shows we announced last week.

We are very proud to finally announce the lineup for the
NYCTaper CMJ Showcase.

When:
Thursday October 23, 2008
Time:
3 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Where:
Cake Shop
Who:
Downstairs Stage (“Electric” Acts)
6:00pm Bearsuit
5:00pm Bloodsugars
4:00pm Bridges and Powerlines
3:00pm Best Friends Forever
Upstairs Stage (“Acoustic” Acts)
5:30pm Sharon Van Etten
4:30pm The Loom
3:30pm Naked Hearts
Ticket Price: Free

Over the course of the next few weeks, expect to read often about this special event — including band bios, interviews and of course more live nyctaper recordings.

The Antlers are on their first extended tour, a Northeast-ish jaunt that covers the first three weeks of October. The nice part is that technology is allowing the NYC fans to follow along. There is a really entertaining Tour Journal written for Soundcheck Magazine by the band’s tour manager [HERE].

We were also quite pleased to see that baltimore-taper captured the opening night of the tour in flac and mp3, which can be downloaded [HERE].

The Antlers return to NYC at the end of the month and perform again at the Pop Tarts Suck Toasted CMJ Party at Cake Shop on Tuesday afternoon, October 21.

We are very happy to report that Yo La Tengo will again perform a series of shows in celebration of Hanukkah at Maxwell’s this December. Our source informs us that the dates are preliminarily set for December 21 through December 28.  There will be an official announcement in the near future. Yo La Tengo is scheduled to leave for a few dates in Asia in less than two weeks, so expect official word before they leave.

Our faithful readers will recall that the one YLT Hanukkah show we attended last year was selected as our concert of the year for 2007.

Motel Motel have received some excellent press lately, and on Saturday they headline a benefit concert at Union Hall. The concert benefits the Jiamini Fund which provides scholarships for Tanzania students.

Also on the bill are The Go Station, Intermissions (former member of Bling Kong) and Tropic of Nelson.

MP3s for Download:
Coffee: Motel Motel
Not Enough: The Go Station

The Details:
Motel Motel, The Go Station, Intermissions, Tropic of Nelson
Union Hall
702 Union Street @ 5th Ave Brooklyn
Doors @ 7:30pm, Show @ 8pm
Tickets – $10
Tickets available [HERE]

As we announced back in August, our inside source learned that Phish would return in 2009. About 20 minutes ago, three dates were officially announced at Phish.com — March 6, 7 and 8 at the Coliseum in Hampton Virginia. Limited Tickets at Phish.com are available now, and the general sale begins on October 18.

If you’ve seen this error lately, here’s why. The popularity of four recordings in one week — Robert Forster, two Sigur Ros shows, and The Feelies — has stretched the server to its limit. Our host server limited this site to 1000 concurrent unique connections after the fiasco last October. If you are connection number 1001, you will get the Error 503 message.

There are several possible solutions to this problem, none of which seem feasible at this point. I have discussed an unlimited dedicated server with my host, but unfortunately the cost is quite prohibitive. There is a small cap and any bandwidth and storage above that cap is charged at an alarming rate considering the amount of traffic nyctaper receives. This is not a pay site, will never be a pay site, and will remain free.

This is also an ad-free site. There are plenty of commercial blogs that shill for their advertisers and post irresponsible and inflammatory material to generate traffic. This is not one of those blogs. Due to the popularity of this site we have reached a Page Rank 5 level and get about 10,000 hits a day. As a result, we have received multiple overtures from advertisers and advertising sites which we have rejected. We reject advertising for two main reasons — to remain objective and free from influence, and as a sign of respect to the artists whose music we feature.

We do not expect any quick solution to the server limitation problem. When our two-year package with our current server host expires in May, we expect to look around for a more stable and perhaps higher speed host. In the meantime, the only other solution we can imagine would be a “white knight” — an unlimited free server like the archive.org host.

Until that pie in the sky solution materializes, all we can ask from our faithful readers is patience and discretion. Please only download one or two recordings at a time and don’t hammer the server. On Sunday, there were 73,000 connection attempts from one IP address in Germany and on Monday, there were 900 files downloaded from an IP address at the University of New Orleans Lakefront Campus.  nyctaper can not tolerate or survive abuse.  We hope that our readers will bear with us and respect the site and its limitations.

Wilco offer a free download today if you pledge to vote. At Wilcoworld, when you provide your name and email address, and pledge to vote on November 4, Wilco will mail a location to download a cover of Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released” recorded (with Fleet Foxes) in Bend Oregon on August 23, 2008.

nyctaper also recorded Wilco in August, and we want you to vote too!

It was almost exactly a year ago when we saw Kria Brekkan last perform a solo concert. That event also took place in a church — St. Mark’s in Manhattan — and featured as an opening act a young Icelandic folk singer performing for the first time in the United States. It was not until last night that we finally realized that young singer was in fact Olof Arnalds. In the year that followed, Olof Arnalds has seen her career bloom to the point where last night, she was the headliner.

However, while last year was a fairly relaxed event, last night’s concert was a strange affair. Kria spent much of her set fiddling with her effects box and actually prematurely ended two numbers as a result. When the scene did work for her, Kria played and sang beautifully.

It was during Olof when things turned strange. After some equipment difficulties, she began her set with a breathtaking acapella Icelandic ballad and proceeded on to several similarly wonderful numbers. At one point, a baby began to cry and when the song ended, Olof revealed that it was her eight-month old son who was crying. The child was brought to the stage and after some fairly awkward moments, eventually the child was placated and removed from the stage. The imbedded video above is quite dark, but it captured that moment. The balance of the show was a series of outstanding numbers with a guest violinist and three songs with Kria. The closing song, a cover of “Lucky Old Sun” was quite moving.

We recorded audio of both sets, except for the first three minutes of Kria’s set. The acoustics, equipment issues, and off-mic performances will make this a diffcult show to master but we expect to offer recordings of both sets in the near future. As a side note, I believe that there is a recording of Olof’s US debut in the nyctaper archives but I have to find it!

In the meantime, Kria set from St. Mark’s Church, September 9, 2007 is still available on nyctaper [HERE].