MV & EE: September 5, 2014 Three Lobed / WXDU Day Show, Hopscotch Music Festival, King’s, Raleigh, NC (FLAC/MP3/Full Set Streaming)

October 7, 2014
By

"photo by PJ Sykes"
[photos by PJ Sykes]

MV & EE are an underground band in the purest sense, the kind of band who self-releases an LP after scads of others have come out on (admittedly obscure) labels and still presses tasty CD-Rs of their best-loved live sets. They exist on exactly that plane you might expect for a Vermont band, doing things their way, happy to earn the love the slow way, through swapped tapes and late-night listening sessions on porches and in basements. Their sound, a sort of far-out experimental folk, is homegrown and not easily replicated. Having seen the band twice this year already, I noticed now more than ever that no two MV & EE sets ever seem quite alike, and Matt Valentine and Erika Elder seem so in tune with one another that no song needs to hew to a single version, either.

This set at the  Three Lobed / WXDU Day Show at King’s during Hopscotch Music Festival was the only one by an outfit that had actually played a night-time festival set (the night before at The Hive), but that didn’t mean MV & EE were willing to dish out the same thing twice. In keeping with the vibe of this show, this set went to the more noisy end of the spectrum, especially on the delicious combo of “Roll On>Mayan Feedback” from this year’s self-released record Alpha Lyrae. Valentine and Elder have been on a bit of a roll lately tour-wise, so they may be off the road for a bit, but check back at their website for all the band’s latest info and releases, including their new seven-inch split with Woods with both bands performing Pink Floyd’s “Green is the Colour”.

I recorded this set with Schoeps MK4V microphones on stage coupled with a soundboard feed from the King’s staff. The sound quality is outstanding. Enjoy!

Direct download of full set: [MP3] | [FLAC]

Stream the full set:

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.

MV & EE
2014-09-05
Three Lobed Recordings / WXDU Day Show
King’s
Raleigh, NC USA

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

Soundboard + Schoeps MK4V (on stage pair)>KC5>CMC6>>Edirol R-44 [OCM]>2x24bit/48kHz WAV>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (mix down, compression)>Izotope Ozone 5 (effects, EQ)>Audacity 2.0.3 (track, fade, amplify, balance)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks
01 [intro – Cory Rayborn and Matt Valentine]
02 Green Is the Colour [Pink Floyd]>
03 Jam>
04 Freedom and Unity Rap
05 [tuning]
06 Roll On>
07 Mayan Feedback

If you enjoyed this recording, PLEASE SUPPORT MV & EE, like them on Facebook and buy their latest record, Alpha Lyrae, directly from the band HERE.

 

Landlady: September 6, 2014 Hometapes / Trekky Records Day Show, Pour House, Hopscotch Music Festival, Raleigh, NC – FLAC/MP3/Streaming

October 6, 2014
By

IMG_7736
[photos by acidjack]

Brooklyn’s Landlady is a really good live band, and they’re good in a way that flatters their musical skill as well as drawing a crowd. Where most music has to make a choice between being interesting or mass-appealing, they seem able to do both, to hang in a narrow band that includes acts like Vampire Weekend, TV On the Radio, and The Dirty Projectors. That I pulled those references from the prior decade isn’t unintentional; Landlady feels like the pleasing synthesis of a few different strands of late-aughts rock, created and executed by Adam Schatz and his bandmates since 2010. Schatz has called Landlady’s songs his “big songs”, and the veteran brings a certain big-tent gusto to the songs that makes them distinct from other projects in which he has been involved, like Man Man or Father Figures. It’s as if Schatz — a multi-instrumentalist himself, including saxophone — distilled some of his other project’s textural complexity and general weirdness into something still-complex but more ready and willing to be liked.

That was all in evidence on the final day of the Hopscotch Music Festival, as Raleigh’s Pour House packed in for the Hometapes / Trekky Records day show. Landlady were representing the former, an outfit recently moved to Durham, North Carolina, and made their label proud. It’d be easy not to care about a day show crowd on a festival’s last day, just near the end of a month-long tour. The band had played Hopscotch Thursday, traveled to Richmond, VA on Friday, then back to Raleigh on Saturday because, as Schatz put it, “we like you”. The band treated us like a special crowd, too, giving us a brisk but powerful set that awakened even the most jaded and hungover festivalgoers. Landlady’s music has an at-times tribal quality to it, abetted in part by the use of two drummers, and that gives the music a festive air. Songs rarely stand still, shifting textures and ideas more often in the space of a single number than many bands achieve in entire albums. True to Schatz’s reputation as a showman, the band saved probably the two biggest standout tracks — “Maria” and “Above My Ground” for the end, though “The Globe” would come in a close third. That final number “Above My Ground” gave Schatz a chance to give a mini-speech mid-song in which he ruminated on the impermanence of things before exhorting the audience to sing the song’s one-word refrain — “always”. As Schatz said, the song is about having lost something, and you got the sense that Landlady would genuinely miss us. They are, after all, a band that stands out the most when they have a packed crowd to watch.

I recorded this set with Schoeps MK41 microphones and a soundboard feed from the Pour House engineer Jack. The sound quality is excellent. Enjoy!

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

Stream the full set: 

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. Feel free to re-post the Soundcloud links.

Landlady
2014-9-06
Hometapes / Trekky Records Day Show
Hopscotch Music Festival
Pour House
Raleigh, NC USA

Hosted at nyctaper.com
Recorded and produced by acidjack

Schoeps MK41>KCY>Z-PFA + Soundboard (engineer: Jack)>>Roland R-26>x24bit/48kHz WAV> Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (align, mix down, compression)>Izotope Ozone 5 (effects, EQ)>Audacity 2.0.3 (track, amplify, balance, downsample, dither)>FLAC ( level 8 )

01 Under the Yard
02 Girl
03 Washington State is Important
04 [banter]
05 Dying Day
06 The Globe
07 [banter2]
08 Maria>
09 Above My Ground (extended version)

If you enjoyed this recording, PLEASE SUPPORT Landlady, like them on Facebook, and buy Upright Behavior from Hometapes.

So Cow: September 20, 2014 Cake Shop – Flac/MP3/Streaming

October 3, 2014
By

So Cow Cake Shop
[photo by nyctaper]

So Cow released their excellent new album The Long Con on September 16, a date that fell square in the middle of a rare US tour. The tour was scheduled to coincide with the excellent Gonerfest thrown by their record label Goner. The tour also included two NYC shows, and we caught the second one at Cake Shop last week. This was the first time we’ve seen So Cow in over four years since a great set at the now long-departed Monster Island Basement in early 2010. At that point, Brian Kelly was playing with a tour band and recording alone, but now So Cow is a proper working band and The Long Con is the first full length album with the trio. The result is that the album sounds more like the live show we encountered in 2010 and again last week, and less like a Kelly bedroom recording. At Cake Shop, the band worked through a nice mix of material old and new, including the first single from the album “Barry Richardson” that we are streaming below. The album has received some excellent reviews, including a fine piece in PopMatters this week. We expect that the positive attention will propel this excellent band and that it won’t be four-plus years before we see them live again. At least I hope it won’t be.

I recorded this set with the Sennheiser cards mounted to the short ceiling in front of the stage and mixed with DPA omnis positioned in front of the stacks. The stage-mount provides a clear capture of the instruments while the stack tape is vocal heavy. The mix is adjusted to accentuate the positives of both sources and the result is a superb recording. Enjoy!

Stream “Barry Richardson”:

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.

So Cow
2014-09-20
Cake Shop
New York NY

Digital Master Recording

Sennheiser MKH-8040s + DPA 4061s > Edirol R-44 (Oade Concert Mod) > 24bit 48kHz wav file > 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 41:10]
01 [intro]
02 Sugar Factory
03 Get Down Off that Thing
04 To Be Confirmed
05 League of Impressionable Teens
06 [banter – fly]
07 Operating at a Loss
08 Waltzer
09 Ruane vs The A Bomb
10 High Standards
11 I Hardly Know You
12 [banter – far right]
13 Barry Richardson
14 [banter – thanks]
15 Nutbush City Limits [Ike Tina Turner]
16 Casablanca
17 [banter – Scottish Independence]
18 To Do List

If you download this recording, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT So Cow, visit their artist page at the Goner Records site, and purchase The Long Con from the Goner Records website [HERE].

Wormburner: September 26, 2014 Mercury Lounge – FLAC/MP3/Streaming

October 2, 2014
By

WBMerc1
[Photos courtesy of Patrick J. Eves]

Wormburner have been kicking around the New York scene here for a few years, making their first appearance on this site back in 2010, where they were rightly compared to a cross between the Hold Steady and Camper Van Beethoven, owing in no small part to frontman Hank Henry’s talking-style vocals. For my part, this record release show at Mercury Lounge for the band’s excellent third LP, Pleasant Living in Planned Communities, was my first with the band. In addition to those references, I caught a pretty strong whiff of some of the better post-grunge bands, especially the mostly-forgotten Harvey Danger. No surprise, then, than by the first chorus of the leadoff track “Drinks At the Plaza Hotel”, I was nodding my head.

This is a very easy band to like, a group of obviously nice people who deploy big hooks and choruses, but don’t skimp on the lyrical concepts just because they know they probably could. To wit, you end up with songs about such things as, per the band’s website, “a downed airman in WWII Europe, a 21st Century soldier returning home from battle, and a transient gay hustler whose youthful looks are weathering with age”. The band’s delivery reflects the professionalism of eight years together as a going concern, and even as they played brand-new material for presumably the first time, Wormburner remained dialed in. The new album material comes across as some of the band’s strongest yet, in particular “Plaza Hotel”, “Catherine”, that WWII song “Hopscotch Gunner”, and “Somewhere Else to Be”. Sean Eden of Luna guested on Pleasant Living and was also on hand for the night’s proceedings, joining the band for two songs including Donovan’s “Seasons of the Witch”.  The Cult’s “She Sells Sanctuary” was the perfect big-rock way to end the show, setting the tone for the Wormburner shows to come in the next months.

I recorded this set with Schoeps MK41 microphones and head Mercury engineer Dave Lefcourt’s soundboard mix. The sound quality is excellent. Enjoy!

Catch Wormburner in New York again at the Tijuana Gift Shop showcase during CMJ on Wednesday, October 22 at Bowery Electric, and again at Mercury Lounge on December 18 for their annual Christmas show.

Stream “Hopscotch Gunner”

Stream “Season of the Witch” [Donovan]

Direct download of full set: [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.

WBMerc2

Wormburner
2014-09-26
Mercury Lounge
New York, NY USA

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

Schoeps MK41>KCY>Z-PFA + Soundboard (engineer: Dave Lefcourt)>>Roland R-26>x24bit/48kHz WAV> Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (align, mix down, compression)>Izotope Ozone 5 (effects, EQ)>Audacity 2.0.3 (track, amplify, balance, downsample, dither)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks [Total Time: 1:07:14]
01 Drinks at the Plaza Hotel
02 Today Might be Our Day
03 Catherine
04 Peekskill
05 Little Things
06 Made-for-TV Movie
07 [tuning1]
08 A Standing Invitation
09 [banter2]
10 Somewhere Else To Be
11 Hopscotch Gunner
12 Pike City Proper
13 The Interstate
14 [banter3]
15 Parliaments on Sundays*
16 Season of the Witch* [Donovan]
17 [banter4]
18 She Sells Sanctuary [The Cult]

* Featuring Sean Eden of Luna

If you enjoyed this recording, PLEASE SUPPORT Wormburner, visit their website, and buy their releases directly from Dive Records.

Circuit des Yeux: September 5, 2014 Hopscotch Music Festival, Tir na Nog, Raleigh, NC (FLAC/MP3/Streaming)

October 1, 2014
By


IMG_7677
[rather bad photo by acidjack]

Circuit des Yeux makes lacerating, personal music that belongs in a certain kind of place, both spiritually and physically. Haley Fohr is four records in now at age twenty-five, and her latest album,  Overdue, was hailed by the ever-reliable Marc Masters of Pitchfork, along with several others, as her best yet. Fohr’s music is somber and dark, delicate at times, unafraid to be dissonant when it needs to be. The Chicago-based musician has played in and around New York several times, but I had missed my chances. As happened a few times this year, Hopscotch Music Festival let me correct that mistake.

Over time, especially on Overdue, Circuit des Yeux’s compositions have taken on a grander scale, and we saw that in action right off the bat, as Fohr led with a brand new, as-yet-untitled song. Along with another new song and two more Overdue tracks, the set was bookended by “Acarina”, one of three Overdue tracks played. In this setting, it became a slashing, sprawling explosion of distortion that made the original seem almost polite — a gem of a live version. I might venture that the added fury packed into it paired well with Fohr’s mood, as I’ll discuss below.

The truth is that somebody could not have picked a worse venue for Circuit des Yeux, seated alone on a low stage in an Irish bar best suited to party music or cover bands. Despite that I knew several people who came to the venue specifically to see Circuit des Yeux, that couldn’t overcome the fact that this was difficult music being played in a loud bar to a crowd much more indifferent than they ought to have been. This is the kind of scheduling mishap that also led, in part, to the festival’s well-publicized artist blowup across town this same night. To her credit, Fohr didn’t call names or lash out. She leaned into her guitar, hair obscuring the louder side of the room, and sang with an intensity that fought its way through. For me as a fan, what is most striking about this set is just how good it is in recorded form — that is, with the advantage of being able to remove most of the audience from the equation.

That’s all well and good, but to read Circuit des Yeux’s take on this set is to be reminded that a concert is not a one-way event. Granted, unlike an artist’s own show, a festival audience may not have paid to be there specifically to see that artist. But that doesn’t mean that the crowd doesn’t have a responsibility to the performer they are seeing. To be in an audience is to be an active participant in the artist’s experience of the show. An audience can elevate, and an audience can also hurt. Before you bother to finish the rest of this, or click play on the streaming tracks, or do anything else, I would urge you to read Fohr’s piece. No musician — be it one you like, one you dislike, or one you’re indifferent to — deserves to be treated like a performing monkey. An artist owes us to do their part, and we owe them as an audience to do ours. A concert isn’t church, sure, but it is a shared space with a single focal point — the artist. Anything that takes away from that is doing damage: to the artist, to the other fans who paid to be there, and to the whole enterprise of what live music is supposed to be about.

For my part, I found Fohr’s performance compelling and look forward to her next steps. Circuit des Yeux isn’t easy or conventional, and that is part of what has made it a favorite of both critics and the other forward-thinking artists such as Xiu Xiu who have toured with her. This music deserves our continued attention and respect. For those that don’t “get it”, whether that’s the case with this artist or with somebody else, please stay away or shut up. The rest of us are trying to hear.

I recorded this set with a soundboard feed provided by Brandon, the night’s engineer, plus Audio Technica 3031 microphones, which were turned way down in this mix. It ended up sounding quite good. I hope you enjoy it.

Download the complete show [MP3] | [FLAC]

Stream the full show:

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.

Circuit des Yeux
2014-09-05
Hopscotch Music Festival
Tir na Nog
Raleigh, NC USA

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

Soundboard (engineer: Brandon)+ Audio Technica 3031 (at SBD, ROC)>Roland R-26>2x24bit/48kHz WAV>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (align, levels, mix down, compression)>Izotope Ozone 5 (EQ, effects)>Audacity 2.0.3 (track, amplify, balance, fades, dither and downsample)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks [Total Time 39:34]
01 Untitled 1
02 Untitled 2
03 [tuning]
04 Nova 88
05 [tuning2]
06 Lithonia
07 [tuning3]
08 Acarina

If you enjoyed this recording, PLEASE SUPPORT Circuit des Yeux, visit her website, and buy Overdue and her other records directly from her.

Glenn Tilbrook: September 25, 2014 City Winery – Flac/MP3/Streaming

September 30, 2014
By

GlennTilbrook City Winery
[screen cap from this video]

As one-half of one of the best songwriting duos of the latter half of the twentieth century, Glenn Tilbrook could easily coast on his merits into a comfortable retirement. But Tilbrook last year released one of his strongest records in decades Happy Ending that could rival the finest output of the Squeeze oeuvre and he is currently on tour in the US through the entire month of October. We were fortunate to catch one of the two shows he played at City Winery last week. Glenn was in great form from the start, engaging the crowd with his very Brit sense of humor and meticulous guitar work. We were most delighted to hear that Glenn’s sweet tenor is as strong and clear as it was the first time we Squeeze back in 1981 (Pier 84), the Mercury Lounge in 1996 and through the time when they appeared at the Nokia Theatre in 2007. On this night, he played two sets and nearly two hours of music featuring the strong new songs (“Everybody Sometimes”), material from his Fluffers period and of course a very healthy dose of Squeeze classics. City Winery is blessed with an excellent sound system and good views (along with some amazing wine) and this night really could not have been more enjoyable. In November, he will tour with his writing partner Chris Difford in the UK, and it was announced at this show that the duo will come to the US in May of 2015. We very much expect to be there then.

I recorded this set with the Schoeps cards mounted directly behind the soundboard and blended with an extremely tastily mixed soundboard feed provided by house FOH Jack O’Hara. The sound quality is quite superb. Enjoy!

Stream “Labeled With Love”:

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.

Glenn Tilbrook
2014-09-25
City Winery
New York NY

Digital Master Recording
Soundboard + Audience Matrix

Soundboard [Engineer: Jack O’Hara] + Schoeps CCM4u Cardioids > Edirol R-44 (Oade Concert Mod) > 2 x 24bit 48kHz wav files > Soundforge (level adjustments, mixdown, EQ, set fades) > CDWave 1.95 (tracking) > TLH > flac (320 MP3 and tagging via Foobar)

Recorded and Produced by nyctaper

Setlist:
set 1
[Total Time 49:52]
01 Do We Roll
02 Ray
03 [banter – scruffy]
04 Take Me I’m Yours
05 Ice Cream
06 Elephant Ride
07 Untouchable
08 Annie Get Your Gun
09 [banter – Dennis intro]
10 Dennis
11 Black Sheep
12 Some Fantastic Place
13 Letting Go
14 Labeled With Love
15 Chat Line Larry

Set 2
[Total Time 54:08]
16 Is that Love
17 If I Didn’t Love You
18 Everybody Sometimes
19 Persephone
20 Black Coffee In Bed
21 By The Light Of The Cash Machine
22 Still
23 Pleasant Valley Sunday [Monkees]
24 Slap and Tickle
25 Pulling Mussels From the Shell
26 Another Nail in My Heart
27 [encore break]
28 Tempted
29 Cold Shoulder
30 Goodbye Girl

If you download this recording, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT Glenn Tilbrook, visit his website, and purchase Happy Ending from the links at his website [HERE].

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