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Sunflower Bean: December 20, 2014 Baby’s All Right – Flac/MP3/Streaming

December 30, 2014

[photo by nyctaper]

Sometimes youth is not wasted on the youth. Sunflower Bean is a band consisting of three people barely scratching the age of 20, but their grasp of neo-psych rock influences and their tightness as a unit belies their age. This is a band that looks, acts, and performs as if they were a veteran unit in their thirties. Perhaps this is because Sunflower Bean is also relentless in playing live — according to Oh My Rockness, they are statistically the hardest working band in NYC in 2014 having played the highest number of live gigs. We caught one of those gigs back in November when they opened for Dream Syndicate and really knocked it out of the park in a pretty sizeable venue and a notable gig. Fortunately, it wasn’t too long before they showed up on this excellent bill at Baby’s All Right, opening for Fat White Family and PC Worship (both coming soon). I decided it was a good idea to check them out from up close at the stage lip and see if my first instincts were correct — and yes, they were. Julia Cumming and Nick Kliven share the vocals and each delivers a different but effective edge to the material. Kliven’s tasty multi-pedaled guitar work is supplemented with Cumming’s powerful bass and anchored by Jacob Farber’s meticulous percussion. Sunflower Bean is just a damned good band and there’s really no telling how far they can go. They will release their debut EP Show Me Your Seven Secrets in January and the EP release show will be at Baby’s All Right on January 31st. In the mean time, Sunflower Bean will play two shows this week — also both at Baby’s, as a headliner tonight December 30 and as part of the New Year’s Festivities on December 31. While our being out of town prevents our attendance this week, we’ll certainly be there on January 31st to catch this excellent band again.

This set was recorded by House FOH Devin, who provided a superb live mix of the multitrack. There are also cardioid microphones installed on the lighting rig about 15 feet in front of the stage. In post-production, I mixed the two sources and the results are quite excellent. Enjoy!

Stream “Tarot Card”:

Download the Complete Show [MP3] / [FLAC]

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, and feel free to repost the Soundcloud links.

Sunflower Bean
2014-12-20
Babys All Right
Brooklyn, NY USA

Digital Soundboard + Audience
Multitrack Recording

Multitrack Soundboard (engineered and recorded by Devin Foley) > Devin mix Wav files + Room mic wav files > Soundforge (level adjustments, setfades) > CDWave 1.95 (tracking) > TLH > flac (320 MP3 and Tagging via Foobar)

Produced by nyctaper

Setlist:
[Total Time 31:20]
01 [new song]
02 Tame Impala
03 I’m A Ghost
04 Call The Doctor
05 Wall Watcher
06 Rock and Roll Heathen
07 Tarot Card

If you download this recording from NYCTaper, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT Sunflower Bean, visit their bandcamp page, visit their Facebook page, purchase their debut EP when it released on their bandcamp page [HERE].

Medeski Scofield Martin & Wood: December 11, 2014 Terminal 5 – FLAC/MP3/Streaming

December 28, 2014

By acidjack

Follow @acidjacknyc

It had been a whopping fifteen years since I last saw Medeski, Martin & Wood (at the Ritz in Raleigh, NC, during the Combustication days, if anyone’s counting), so I was grateful to get another bite at that apple on one of my final shows of the year. The addition of the guitarist John Scofield, the band’s longtime collaborator, made this show at Terminal 5 a special treat.

MMW always straddled the line between being a serious jazz unit and serving up the more funky, R&B and blues-driven music that endeared them to the jam band scene, which has always orbited around the band even though they’re not really a perfect fit for it. With Scofield in the lineup, the band becomes a bit more of a “rock” band, and that made Scofield an especially worthy addition in this cavernous room.

To that end, the first set of the performance worked better for me, kicking off with a few minutes of improv before delving into “Sham Time”, the leadoff track from the foursome’s 2014 album Juice, followed by perhaps the moment of the show, “Juicy Lucy”, featuring Martin’s mother Jean and Jerry Paris dancing together onstage. From there we got an older MSMW tune, “Chank”, followed by two more from Juice.

The second set fell into the trap that I think befalls too many otherwise-talented bands followed by the “jam band” faithful — the curse of the Rock Canon. I find it unfortunate when a musician of any stripe can’t bring themselves to churn out something more inventive than covers of the best-loved songs of the sixties and seventies, but it’s especially unfortunate coming from what is ostensibly a jazz outfit. Each of “The Times They Are A-Changin'”, “Sunshine of Your Love” and The Doors’ heinous “Light My Fire” can be found on Juice, and none did much credit to these musicians on that album or in the room on this night. While the quartet found some new solo-worthy material to mine in each song, the fact remains that these three well-worn hits are better suited to a jukebox, rather than half of a live set by a band that’s still making quality new material.

That quibble aside, I’m excited to have seen MSMW for the first time, and to have (finally) caught MMW again after so long of a break.

I recorded this set with Schoeps MK41 supercardiod microphones right at the soundboard, into the Aerco custom preamp for extra warmth and realism. The sound quality is excellent. Enjoy!

Download the complete show: [MP3] | [FLAC]

Stream the complete show:

Medeski Scofield Martin & Wood
2014-12-11
Terminal 5
New York, NY USA

Exclusive download hosted at nyctaper.com
Recorded and produced by acid jack

Schoeps MK41 (at SBD, DFC, PAS)>KC5>CMC6>Aerco MP-2>Sony PCM-D50>24bit/48kHz WAV>Izotope Ozone 5 (EQ, exciter, imaging)>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (light dynamics)>Audacity 2.0.3 (track, amplify, balance, downsample, dither)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Thanks to aaronji for the setlist/tracking assistance

Tracks
Set One [Time 52:06]
01 [improv]
02 Sham Time
03 Juicy Lucy
04 Chank
05 North London
06 Helium
07 [banter]

Set Two [Time: 1:02:14]
08 Louis the Shoplifter
09 Little Walter Rides Again
10 Sunshine of Your Love
11 I Know You
12 Light My Fire
13 [banter2/encore break]
14 The Times They Are A-Changin’

If you enjoyed this recording, PLEASE SUPPORT MMW, visit their website, and buy Juice from the band.

nyctaper Top 10 Concerts of 2014

December 27, 2014

By nyctaper

NYCTaper (the site) will have our “Top 25 Moments” post later this week, but in the meantime this is the nyctaper (the person) list of my Top 10 concerts of 2014. Since I recorded less than half of the recordings posted on the site this year, its by no means comprehensive but its a personal list I’ve done since the site began in 2007.

1. The War On Drugs: March 19 and 20 2014 Bowery Ballroom
2014 was pretty much the year of the The War On Drugs. Their album has been the consensus number one selection among a vast number of end-of-year lists — appearing at or near the top in every single list we’ve read recently. And we’re proud of the fact that we were there first. In my review of this show, I predicted that Lost In The Dream would be an album of the year candidate and would be in the decade discussion. The band played two flawless shows at Bowery Ballroom, bringing the new album’s material to life with passion and precision.

2. Wussy: October 10, 2014 Knitting Factory / October 11, 2014 Private House Larchmont NY
2014 was also the year of Wussy. As their album Attica continues to show up on virtually every knowledgeable year-end list, it appears that the world at large is finally catching on to a band we’ve been pushing for the last half-decade. In between these two shows — a full band set headlining the CBGB Fest at the Knit, and the following night playing acoustically at a private house show — Wussy filmed a segment with CBS national morning news that recently aired. It was their first national tv appearance, and I’m guessing it won’t be their last. Both of these shows were great for different reasons, but both indicated the strengths of this unconventional but extraordinary band.

3. Wilco: October 29, 2014 Capitol Theatre Port Chester NY
Of the three nights when Wilco celebrated their 20th anniversary and the tour came to the NYC area, this was my favorite night for variety of reasons. The performances on all three nights were top notch, but this night had the extra bonus of some older Wilco material that I had never heard live or hadn’t seen in years.

4. Ty Segall: September 17, 2014 Webster Hall
Ty Segall keeps churning out the records and they keep getting better. The shows are also genuinely the best show in town — crazy talented band, great songs and a crowd that matches the energy from stage top to bottom. This night at Webster was part of two consecutive sold-out shows for Ty and this set was easily one of my best of the year, notable for the force of the crowd causing the photo pit guardrails to be removed because of of the crush.

5. Marah: July 12, 2014 Bowery Electric
The story of Marah is one of redemption and ultimately an extraordinary reinvention. A fairly successful band from the aughts, Marah was dormant for a few years before rising up from the ashes into an eclectic Americana band whose project was to resurrect centuries-old Pennsylvania folk songs into a contemporary format. Add to the band a 10 year old child prodigy on fiddle and a PhD in rural cultures on banjo and you have one of the most unlikely success stories in recent memory. This show at Bowery Electric was a revelation in so many ways, it perhaps best to just listen to the show in its entirety.

6. Woods: November 4, 2014 Death By Audio
This night ended up being my last at Death By Audio. If recording your last show one of your favorite venues ever ends up being one of your favorite bands, then its all good. For this show, Woods reunited with former member Lucas for several songs including the transition jam from his set to the main Woods set that led into “Bend Beyond” — also one of the best single moments of the year.

7. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard: October 13, 2014 Baby’s All Right
Their new album came out too late in the year to end up on too many end-of-year lists, but if it had been released in February or March it would be right there. King Gizzard is a band clearly on the rise and their shows are all out ragers. We saw them four times this year but this was the one that really kicked it in and took this band to an entire other level. The opening segue was the one of the best extended pieces of music we heard all year.

8. PUP: February 21, 2014 Cameo Gallery
This is likely the show that I saw this year where the most unbridled energy emanated from the stage. PUP is part of the burgeoning punk scene in Toronto and they toured North America and Europe persistently throughout the year in support of their self-titled debut on Side One Dummy Records. This night at Cameo pre-dated the release of the album and the crowd was a fraction of the fans they’d see before the end of the year, but PUP was simply one full hour of energy, humor and fun and this was one of my favorite nights of the year.

9. The Kickback: October 23, 2014 NYCTaper Unofficial CMJ Day Party, Cake Shop
I invited The Kickback to play our CMJ show because of one song in particular — a version of “Rob Our House” at Pianos that we had seen in June. But when the band played their afternoon set in the basement of Cake Shop, I soon learned that this was far from a one-song band as every track was more compelling than the next. Of course, “House” was the number that blew mostly everyone away when it closed the set, but in reality this entire performance was killer.

Beach Fossils: December 17, 2014 Glasslands – Flac/MP3/Streaming

December 26, 2014

By nyctaper

[photo by Brianna Duzich]

Its comforting to say goodbye to things we love by coming full circle to our earliest experiences. My final show at Glasslands was a wild night from Beach Fossils — a band who’ve played much larger gigs in recent years but who returned to their roots in the final week of the venue. We first saw Beach Fossils at Glasslands as an opener of a four-band bill way back in January of 2010. It was one of their first full band shows ever. Their first career single was “Daydream” and it wasn’t released until February of 2010. That song was performed at the gig five years ago, and that track closed this 2014 set (and its streaming below). In the last five years, the band has released two excellent albums, reached the Billboard Indie charts, sold out Bowery Ballroom and reached several other milestones. Indeed, Dustin Payseur and his wife (and former Captured Tracks General Manager) Katie Garcia recently started their own label Bayonet Records. On Wednesday, it was clear that although this is a band looking forward, this was a night for looking back. Dustin made multiple references to the venue and the band’s history at Glasslands and Beach Fossils played a lengthy set of material from their entire career, not just the newest album Clash The Truth. This was yet another sellout among Glasslands’ final gigs and the crowd was energetic and very animated — bopping along with each song throughout the entire set. Personally, this was a very appropriate send-off to a venue that we’ve attended for nearly eight years — a fun band on a fun night visiting a memorable past. Goodbye forever Glasslands.

I recorded this set with the installed Naiant Cardioids mixed with an excellent board feed provided by house FOH Chris Madden. There is an intermittent hissing noise, which is the smoke machine onstage audible in both the room mics and the soundboard feed. Otherwise, its a superb recording. Enjoy!

Stream “Daydream”:

Download the Complete Show [MP3] / [FLAC]

Beach Fossils
2014-12-17
Glasslands Gallery
Brooklyn, NY USA

Digital Master Recording
Soundboard + Audience Matrix

Soundboard [engineer Chris Madden] + Naiant X-R Cardioid > Sound Devices 744t > 2x 24bit 48kHz wav files > Soundforge (level adjustments, set fades, downsample) > CDWave 1.95 (tracking) > TLH > flac (320 MP3 and Tagging via Foobar)

Recorded and Produced
by nyctaper

Setlist
[Total Time 1:20:12]
01 [introduction]
02 Generational Synthetic
03 Shallow
04 [banter – Grasslands]
05 Vacation
06 Careless
07 What A Pleasure
08 Birthday
09 [banter – shots]
10 Sleep Apnea
11 [banter – see you]
12 Youth
13 [banter – holiday party]
14 Clash The Truth
15 Permutation [new song]
16 [banter – memories]
17 Calyer
18 [banter – math]
19 Taking Off
20 [banter – Devo tease]
21 Crashed Out
22 [Nirvana tease]
23 Daydream
24 [encore break]
25 [instrumental]
26 Twelve Roses

If you download this recording from NYCTaper, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT Beach Fossils, visit their website, visit their Facebook page, purchase Clash The Truth from Captured Tracks [HERE] and purchase future releases from Bayonet Records [HERE].

Angel Olsen: December 9, 2014 Bowery Ballroom – FLAC/MP3/Full Set Streaming

December 23, 2014

By acidjack

Follow @acidjacknyc

[photo by acidjack]

Angel Olsen ended up on a lot of year-end lists this year for several reasons, but the instrument you’ll notice most is her voice. Olsen has one of those aching, slightly sharp tones to her throat that doesn’t let your attention slip, refuses to fade into background music. This show at Bowery Ballroom was the second of a two-night stand for Olsen at the venue, and her final show of the year. In keeping with that, she let loose, drinking tequila onstage and playing both some cool covers (Waylon Jennings’ “Rainy Day Woman”) and some of her oldest songs (“Tiniest Lights”). She played that latter song, and several others, to a room rapt and whisper-quiet, alone on her guitar. The rock-ier songs, especially those from the lauded Burn Your Fire for No Witness, may have carried the day with the crowd, but it was these quiet numbers that gave the clearer window into who Olsen is and just how affecting her work can be. It wouldn’t be wrong to call Olsen one of the breakout acts of 2014, and she more than deserves the title. I hope she has a wonderful 2015.

I recorded this set with Schoeps MK5 cardiod microphones from our usual location in the venue. The sound quality is excellent. Enjoy!

Download the complete set: [MP3] | [FLAC]

Stream the complete set:

Angel Olsen
2014-12-09
Bowery Ballroom
New York, NY USA

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

Schoeps MK5c (PAS, slightly LOC)>KC5>CMC6>Sound Devices USBPre2>Edirol R-44 [OCM]>2x24bit/48kHz WAV>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (compression, adjust levels)>Izotope Ozone 5 (stereo image, exciter)>Audacity 2.0.5 (fades, tracking, amplify, balance, downsample, dither)>FLAC (level 8)

Tracks [Total Time 1:22:50]
01 Hi-Five
02 Free
03 Drunk and With Dreams
04 Stars
05 Lights Out
06 [banter1]
07 Acrobat
08 High & Wild
09 Tiniest Seed
10 When You Walk In the Room [The Searchers]
11 Sweet Dreams
12 [banter2]
13 Forgiven/Forgotten
14 [banter3]
15 Windows
16 Tiniest Lights
17 [banter4]
18 White Fire
19 [encore break]
20 Rainy Day Woman [Waylon Jennings]
21 May As Well

If you enjoyed this recording, PLEASE SUPPORT Angel Olsen, visit her website, and buy Burn Your Fire For No Witness there.

Soulside: December 17 and 18, 2014 Saint Vitus – FLAC/MP3/Streaming

December 22, 2014

By EricPH

[video still via (((unartig)))]

It came with nearly no warning that Soulside announced their first shows in twenty-five years. The reunion was initially prompted by the release of the highly anticipated DC hardcore documentary, Salad Days: A Decade of Punk in Washington, DC (1980–90). Announced first as a single date at legendary DC club The Black Cat to coincide with a screening of the film, the reunion quickly expanded to include two nights at Brooklyn’s Saint Vitus and an additional night at The Black Cat. The four shows sold out almost immediately with a bare minimum of hype and promotion.

Of the 1980s DC hardcore scene, Soulside are hardly the most well-known. Fugazi is, of course, the most visible of all those bands. Soulside often get pegged as followers of Fugazi, but in fact they were active years before Fugazi and the relationship between the two bands is less of one band following another and more of a cross-pollination within a community. After disbanding in 1989, lead singer Bobby Sullivan would take a break from music, later forming the bands Rain Like the Sound of Trains and Sevens. The rest of Soulside—Scott McCloud (guitar), Johnny Temple (bass), and Alexis Fleisig (drums)—would go on to form seminal noise rock band Girls Against Boys.

Twenty-five years to the day since the band’s final gig, Soulside took the stage at Brooklyn’s Saint Vitus. Over two nights, from the rumbling opening bass riff of “God City” to the lean punk of “Under the Glare,” the band draws from their entire body of work. Many of us relative newcomers too young to have experienced Soulside during their initial run encountered the band via the CD collection, Soon Come Happy, which gathers the better known Dischord albums Trigger and Hot Bodi-Gram. Each of those albums is well represented here. From Trigger, which was recently reissued by Dischord and expanded to include the Bass • 103 single, we get some of Soulside’s signature tracks: “Baby,” “Trigger,” and “Name in Mind.” They play almost all of their final record, Hot Bodi-Gram, the highlights of which are “God City,” “Pembroke,” and the duo of “New Slow Fucky” and “New Fast Fucky.”

For longtime devotees—or simply those old enough and hip enough to have been there—“Under the Glare,” and “Lookin’ Around” date back to 1984 when the band was called Lunchmeat. And from the band’s first album Less Deep Inside Keeps, originally released in 1987 as a joint venture between Dischord and Sammich (another essential DC Hardcore label), they play “Pearl to Stone,” “Fresh Air,” “Other Side,” and a cover of Wire’s “Ex-Lion Tamer.”

Soulside is a band I never thought I’d see play live. And looking around at Saint Vitus each night, it was clear I wasn’t the only one. Most of the crowd didn’t look old enough to have seen the band during their initial run. But whether people were drawn to the band like I was, through Girls Against Boys, or whether people discovered them through the punk rock education that is the Dischord catalog, it was clear the songs still resonate. It was an absolute pleasure to get to see these guys perform together and I’m extraordinarily proud to have taped these sets.

I recorded these shows with a pair of AKG C480/CK61 cardioids set up in front of the soundboard, combined with a feed from Saint Vitus FOH, Nick. The sound in the room for both nights was excellent and these recordings reflect that. Enjoy!

Download the complete December 17th show: [MP3] | [FLAC]

Download the complete December 18th show: [MP3] | [FLAC]

Stream the complete December 17th show:

Stream the complete December 18th show:

Soulside
2014-12-17
Saint Vitus
Brooklyn, NY

Exclusive download hosted at nyctaper.com
Recorded and produced by Eric PH

Soundboard (engineer: Nick) + AKG C480B/CK61 > Roland R-26 > 2xWAV(24/48) > Audacity 2.0.5 (mixdown, fades, EQ, amplify, downsample, dither, tracking, tagging) > FLAC (level 8)

Tracks [1:05:15]
01. God City
02. What Do You Know About That?
03. Punch the Geek
04. Baby
05. Trigger
06. Name in Mind
07. New Slow Fucky
08. New Fast Fucky
09. Bass
10. Under the Glare
11. X-Lion Tamer [Wire]
12. Lookin’ Around
13. Clifton Wall
14. [Encore Break]
15. War
16. Pembroke
17. A Love Supreme
18. Pearl to Stone

Soulside
2014-12-18
Saint Vitus
Brooklyn, NY

Exclusive download hosted at nyctaper.com
Recorded and produced by Eric PH

Soundboard (engineer: Nick) + AKG C480B/CK61 > Roland R-26 > 2xWAV(24/48) > Audacity 2.0.5 (mixdown, fades, EQ, amplify, downsample, dither, tracking, tagging) > FLAC (level 8)

Tracks [1:04:26]
01. War
02. Pembroke
03. Trigger
04. Baby
05. Punch the Geek
06. Bass
07. New Slow Fucky
08. New Fast Fucky
09. Fresh Air
10. I Find the Other Side
11. Bad Show
12. Clifton Wall
13. A Love Supreme
14. [Encore Break]
15. God City
16. Pearl to Stone
17. What Do You Know About That?
18. Under the Glare

If you enjoyed these recordings, PLEASE SUPPORT Soulside—like them on Facebook and buy the Trigger reissue from Dischord.

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Sunflower Bean: December 20, 2014 Baby’s All Right – Flac/MP3/Streaming

Medeski Scofield Martin & Wood: December 11, 2014 Terminal 5 – FLAC/MP3/Streaming

nyctaper Top 10 Concerts of 2014

Beach Fossils: December 17, 2014 Glasslands – Flac/MP3/Streaming

Angel Olsen: December 9, 2014 Bowery Ballroom – FLAC/MP3/Full Set Streaming

Soulside: December 17 and 18, 2014 Saint Vitus – FLAC/MP3/Streaming

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