Hans Chew: October 18, 2012 NYCTaper CMJ Day Show, Cake Shop – FLAC/MP3/Streaming

October 30, 2012
By


[Photos by acidjack]

Hans Chew plays a brand of old-time, piano-driven rock n’ roll you may not have even realized you were nostalgic for. As the piano man for Brooklyn country-psych stalwarts D. Charles Speer & the Helix, Chew proved himself as a composer and vocalist in his own right on his debut album Tennessee & Other Stories.  Imbued with a honky-tonk barroom quality, Chew’s piano playing is even more central to his solo project than it is to his work with Speer, and that’s all to the good. As a Southerner now living in New York, Chew’s work remains rooted down south, and incorporates elements of country, bluegrass and Southern boogie. Like D. Charles Speer, Chew isn’t simply a revival act, but a modern performer who has taken a classic, regionally-rooted sound and imbued it with new ideas and new vitality.

We were thrilled to have a chance to invite Chew to play our fifth annual unofficial CMJ day show at Cake Shop, and Chew and the band delivered in a big way, with a set of almost all-new material that continued on Tennessee’s promise. “Strange Love” shone among the new numbers, with its funky guitar groove and catchy refrain. “Junker’s Blues”, which closed the set, was the kind of timeless-but-new number we expect from Chew, and it ended his part of the afternoon on a high note. We would have loved to have Chew at our show in any capacity, but getting this rare preview of new material made it an even bigger honor.

I recorded this set with house engineer Justin’s mix combined with Schoeps MK5 microphones in the cardiod setting mounted on the ceiling just in front of the stage lip and spread wide. The results are outstanding. Enjoy!

Stream “Strange Love”

Direct download of MP3 files [HERE] | Direct download of FLAC files [HERE]

If the FLAC link is no longer working, email nyctaper for the FLAC files

Follow acidjack on twitter

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.

Hans Chew
2012-10-18
NYCTaper CMJ Day Show
Cake Shop
New York, NY USA

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

Soundboard (engineer: Justin) + Schoeps MK5>KCY>Z-PFA>>Edirol R-44 [OCM]>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (mix down, fades, align, adjust levels)>Izotope Ozone 5 (EQ, thicken, exciter)>Audacity 3.0 (tracking, amplify, balance, light DR compression, downsample)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks
01 [intro]
02 Chango>
03 Tom Hughes Town
04 Strange Love
05 Magnet Moon
06 [banter]
07 Junker’s Blues

If you enjoyed this recording, PLEASE SUPPORT Hans Chew, visit his website, and buy Tennessee and Other Stories from Three Lobed/Divide By Zero Records [HERE]

Heliotropes: October 18, 2012 NYCTaper CMJ Day Show, Cake Shop – FLAC/MP3/Streaming

October 29, 2012
By


[Photo courtesy of MaryAnne Ventrice]

At first, it’s hard to grasp that the women of Heliotropes are your showcase’s heaviest band by far. From looking at them, you might not guess that the diverse group of young women makes monster, Sabbath-inspired rock with chunky, wah wah riffs and a raging backbeat. Also one of the newest acts on our CMJ day show bill, these ladies are kindred spirits of modern stoner/psych rockers like The Midnight Ghost Train, Pontiak and others, and they don’t hold back onstage. For a band whose current output consists of some singles on their bandcamp page, Heliotropes already have a well-developed sound and delivery – and based on this set at our unofficial CMJ day show at Cake Shop, are well on their way to an LP. Most of the tracks played at this show were new other than the released single “Ribbons”, and that new material is consistently hard hitting. The band closed out with a favorite of mine from Nirvana’s first album Bleach, the scorching “Negative Creep”, which the women of Heliotropes brought down in tempo a touch to give a more dirge-like sound to the song.

I recorded this set with a soundboard feed provided by the day’s excellent engineer Justin together with Schoeps MK5 microphones in the cardiod setting mounted directly in front of the stage.  The sound is “in your face” and excellent. Enjoy!

Stream “Quatto”

Direct download of MP3 files [HERE] | Direct download of FLAC files [HERE]
If the FLAC link is no longer working, email nyctaper for the FLAC filesFollow acidjack on twitter

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.

Heliotropes
2012-10-18
NYCTaper CMJ Day Show
Cake Shop
New York, NY USA

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

Soundboard (engineer: Justin) + Schoeps MK5>KCY>Z-PFA>>Edirol R-44 [OCM]>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (mix down, fades, align, adjust levels)>Izotope Ozone 5 (EQ, thicken, exciter)>Audacity 3.0 (tracking, amplify, balance, light DR compression, downsample)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks
01 Psalms
02 Early In The Morning
03 Light and Dark
04 Ribbons
05 Quatto
06 Negative Creep

If you enjoyed this recording, PLEASE SUPPORT Heliotropes, like them on Facebook, and check out their music on their bandcamp page.

Crime & The City Solution: October 22, 2012 Music Hall of Williamsburg – Flac/MP3/Streaming

October 27, 2012
By


[photo by P-Squared Photography]

These twenty-year reunions can be mixed affairs. Some bands are content to simply play the “hits” (i.e. Pixies, Wedding Present), while others re-establish themselves as working bands performing both old and newer material (Dinosaur Jr., Mission of Burma). When Crime & The City Solution announced their first tour and album in more than twenty years, the hope would be that they would follow the latter course. Crime didn’t really have any “hits” to recycle anyway. At Music Hall last week, it was quite apparent from the outset that this was indeed a vital working band and while just three new songs were performed, the title track from the new album (American Twilight) was played in the final encore slot. The other obvious positive sign was that Crime was not just mailing it in — in fact it was quite the opposite. This performance was intense, tight, and inspired. Band founder and leader Simon Bonney anchored the centerstage with his dramatic and confident vocals while the twin guitars of Alex Hacke and David Eugene Edwards were both powerful and animated. The eight-piece band wasted precious little time with formalities but simply rocked hard from start to finish. I left the venue encouraged that sometimes second acts (or for Crime, third or fourth acts) can be just as compelling as the brand new. While their US tour is now complete, Crime & The City Solution will continue to tour in Europe for the balance of this month. We expect that they will return to NYC in the not too distant future, as American Twilight will be released on Mute Records in the Spring.

I recorded this set from the center of the balcony with the Sennheisers mounted on the railing at a lower level to line up with the stacks. While the sound in the venue was somewhat boomy, we EQ’d a little bass roll-off and boosted the highs. The clarity (and vocals) now supplement the rich bottom end for an excellent recording. Enjoy!

Stream “Six Bell Chime:

Download the Complete show in [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.

Crime And The City Solution
2012-10-22
Music Hall of Williamsburg
Brooklyn, NY USA

Digital Master Recording
Recorded from Center Balcony Rail

Sennheiser MKH-8040s > Edirol R-44 (Oade Concert Mod) > 24bit 48kHz wav file > Soundforge (level adjustments, EQ, mixdown, set fades) > CDWave 1.95 (tracking) > TLH > flac (320 MP3 and Tagging via Foobar)

Recorded and Produced
by nyctaper
2012-10-25

Setlist:
[Total Time 1:30:02]
01 The Bride Ship
02 Keepsake
03 The Colonel Does Not Call Anymore
04 Rose Blue
05 Steal To The Sea
06 I Have The Gun
07 My Love Takes Me There
08 Hunter
09 On Every Train (Grain Will Bear Grain)
10 The Last Dictator (1 and 2)
11 The Dolphins And The Shark
12 [band introductions]
13 All Must Be Love
14 [encore break]
15 Six Bells Chime
16 American Twilight

If you download this recording from NYCTaper, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT Crime & The City Solution, visit their website, and purchase their official releases from Mute Records [HERE].

Pop. 1280: September 7, 2012 Hopscotch Festival (Raleigh, NC) – FLAC/MP3/Streaming

October 26, 2012
By


[YouTube video courtesy of Mandi. See more of her videos]

Like more than a few bands from our part of the country, NYC’s Pop. 1280 made the trip down to this year’s Hopscotch Music Festival in Raleigh, North Carolina to share the tiny stage at Slim’s with some like-minded North Carolina bands as well as some bad-ass New York contemporaries. On a bill that also featured nyctaper favorites White Hills along with Chapel Hill’s Pipe and Raleigh’s Whatever Brains, Pop. 1280 fell more in line stylistically with the two NC bands, combining a heavy, aggressive punk-influenced sound with synth flourishes that helped identify them more with our neck of the woods. This set covered material from the band’s first two previous Sacred Bones Records releases, 2010’s The Grid and 2012’s The Horror.  The band expects to have another record under their belt some time in 2013, which it would appear some of the “unknown” songs below may be on.

Like the Whatever Brains and Pipe recordings from this show, this set was recorded by NC taper Dave Schwentker with fellow North Carolinian Bryon’s ceiling-installed Countryman B3 omnidirectional mics. The sound is excellent. Enjoy!

Stream “Step Into the Grid”

Direct download of MP3 files [HERE] | Direct download of FLAC files [HERE]
If the FLAC link is no longer working, email nyctaper for the FLAC files

Follow acidjack on twitter

Check out all of NYCTaper’s Hopscotch Festival recordings

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.

Pop. 1280
2012-09-07
Hopscotch Music Festival
Slim’s
Raleigh, NC USA

Hosted at nyctaper.com
Recorded and produced by Dave Schwentker

Countryman B3 (ceiling mount)>Church Audio CA-9100>Olympus LS-10>Audacity (edits)>FLAC

Tracks
01 [intro]
02 [unknown1]
03 Step Into the Grid
04 [unknown2]
05 Anonymous Blonde
06 Burn the Worm
07 [unknown3]
08 New Electronics

If you enjoyed this recording, PLEASE SUPPORT Pop. 1280, like them on Facebook, and buy their records from Sacred Bones [HERE]

Chelsea Light Moving: September 12, 2012 285 Kent – Flac/MP3/Streaming

October 24, 2012
By


[photo by acidjack]

Chelsea Light Moving is Thurston Moore’s new band. As Sonic Youth is on hiatus and has left the future of the band somewhat of a mystery, the various members have pursued their own projects. Thurston chose to debut Chelsea Light Moving with a series of concerts throughout Europe, but their very first show in NYC took place in mid-September at 285 Kent. The show was presented by Issue Project as a Benefit for Tom Carter, which acidjack outlined in his post of the Gunn-Truscinski Duo set from this show. Suffice to say, we applaud the artists who performed for Tom at this show. You too can support Tom by following this link.

Chelsea Light Moving has released four songs at Matador and through various media outlets in anticipation of a full length release later this year, or early next. At 285 Kent, the band began the set with those four songs. We’re streaming “Frank O’Hara Hit” in which Thurston riffs on the concept of having a birthday in July. Its also the most “familiar” sounding song of the bunch for SY fans. The balance of the set consisted of material that has not yet been released, and the song titles are approximated from our research into info about CLM online. The song we’ve titled “I Come to Get Wasted” (at the suggestion of this Spin review of the show) gave Thurston an opportunity to really stretch and his guitar playing on this track is notable for both its aggression and imagination. We expect that Thurston will continue to grow this material and we look forward to the development of this new project.

I recorded this show in the usual manner for this venue. The Sennheiser Cards were mounted near the stage and after requesting and receiving permission to supplement the somewhat boomy room with a board feed, we mixed in about 25% of the board for clarity in the vocals and guitars. The result is an overall excellent recording, as SY’s FOH Aaron mixed this difficult room about as well as anyone has done. Enjoy!

Stream “Frank O’Hara Hit”:

Download the Complete show in MP3 [HERE] or FLAC [HERE]

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.

Chelsea Light Moving
2012-09-12
285 Kent
Brooklyn, NY USA

Digital Master Recording
Soundboard + Audience Matrix

Soundboard + Sennheiser MKH-8040s > 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
2012-10-23

Setlist:
[Total Time 47:48]
01 Groovy and Linda
02 Burroughs
03 [tuning]
04 Frank O’Hara Hit
05 Empires of Time
06 Sleeping Where I Fall
07 I Come to Get Wasted
08 [instrumental]
09 [banter]
10 Too Fucking Bad

LEARN HOW YOU CAN HELP TOM CARTER – BY BUYING MUSIC AND DONATING TO HIS MEDICAL EXPENSES – HERE

Support Thurston Moore and Chelsea Light Moving by visiting the band’s page at Matador Records, the band blog, the Sonic Youth site, and purchasing Thurston’s official releases at the Store [HERE].

Thieving Irons: October 7, 2012 Backyard Brunch Sessions – FLAC/MP3/Streaming

October 23, 2012
By


[Photos by Dominick Mastrangelo]

Thieving Irons, the current project of Brooklyn musician Nate Martinez, is a fairly gentle, vibey sort of band even in its electric format, so I was excited to see how their sound would change in a true “acoustic” setting. The band’s second album, Behold, This Dreamer! is a lovely piece of rainy-afternoon music, with gauzy production and at-times confessional lyrics that also incorporate historical and literary references. This most recent installment of the Backyard Brunch Sessions – held due to weather in a Prospect Heights apartment – gave Martinez the chance to distill his vision further, stripping his band to a duo of himself on vocals and guitar and longtime collaborator Dan Brantigan on a rare instrument called the EVI (a sort of synth trumpet, and a large component of that “vibey” sound). As a crowd gathered around with organizer David Chaitt’s spicy granola (made spicy by local Mike’s Hot Honey), Martinez and Brantigan played us eight songs that represented the range of Martinez’s current vision, all of them but two from Behold.

Two of the album’s biggest rockers, “Sleepwalking Into the Ocean” and “So Long” were among my favorite reinterpretations, not least because they differed the most from the album tracks. Even without the anthemic guitars and keyboards, “Sleepwalking” retained its resolute hopefulness and uplift; the poetry of “So Long” – possibly the album’s most memorable song – shone through, as Brantigan’s EVI provided a spare dreamscape in the background. Another of the show’s highlights, dedicated to GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, was a cover of the Kinks classic “Strangers”, a song that ought to resonate in a modern, more self-absorbed time. The band closed with “Gentle Hands”, a pastiche of images that, at its conclusion, suggests a longing for home.

I recorded this set with AKG 414 large-diaphragm microphones set to “wide cardiod” in an X/Y pattern (pictured below) in order to reduce the directionality and provide a more stable stereo image. The sound is excellent. Enjoy!

Stream “So Long”

Direct download of MP3 files [HERE] | Direct download of FLAC files [HERE]

If the FLAC link is no longer working, email nyctaper for the FLAC files

Follow acidjack on twitter

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.

Thieving Irons
2012-10-07
Backyard Brunch Sessions
Brooklyn, NY USA

Hosted at nyctaper.com
Recorded and produced by acidjack

AKG C 414 B-XLS (wide cardiod, x/y)>Edirol R-44 [OCM]>24bit/48kHz WAV>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (set fades, compression, adjust L/R balance, cleanup)>Izotope Ozone 5 (EQ, exciter, imaging)>Audacity 3.0 (tracking, amplify, balance, downsample)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks
01 [intro]
02 Babylon
03 End of September
04 Behold, This Dreamer!
05 Sleepwalking Into the Ocean
06 So Long
07 Swimming With Minnows
08 [banter]
09 Strangers [The Kinks]
10 Gentle Hands

If you enjoyed this recording, PLEASE SUPPORT Thieving Irons, like them on Facebook, and buy their records and merchandise from their online store [HERE]

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