Martin Courtney: February 13, 2016 Baby’s All Right

March 8, 2016
By

734dc664

There’s much love for the band Real Estate both at this site and in NYC in general, but that doesn’t mean everyone’s a fan. With the detractors, it seems that what bugs them the most is that Real Estate make things too easy — their music seems to positively roll forth from them in a smooth wave, with breezy melodies and approachable hooks, vocals wafting in a comfortable haze. That voice comes from one Martin Courtney, who rolled out a solo effort, Many Moons, last year. It’s what you hope for in a solo album — a scaled-back version of a Real Estate album in some ways, a much more personal, intimate album in others. If you don’t like Real Estate, well, I don’t know what you to tell you, because Courtney doesn’t abandon the band’s formula so much as peel back a few layers. “You will not find me wasting my energy” begins one couplet on the album’s opener “Awake,” and you get the sense with this record that it’s not a lack of effort by any means, but it is a great example of not trying too hard.

Courtney hit that sweet spot at this recent Baby’s All Right show, a venue which at this point feels like a second home for a certain caste of Brooklyn music regulars. This performance, falling near the end of the tour, had the mellow, easy feel of a weekend show before a friendly crowd. We got to hear the entire album, highlighted by the single “Airport Bar,” and the kickoff track “Northern Highway.” Of course, it wouldn’t have been a show by a Real Estate band member without some crucial covers, and Courtney nailed both the placid “Harvest Moon” and Echo and the Bunnymen’s “The Killing Moon” before the grand finale, with opener EZTV joining the headliners for a Feelies cover, “On the Roof,” from their second album The Good Earth. It was a night for the familiar, a night for the good, and one for a longtime friend to share with the people who were with him from the beginning.

The engineer Jason Kelly of Baby’s All Right recorded and mixed this set. The sound quality is outstanding. Enjoy!

Download the complete show: [MP3/FLAC]

Stream the complete show (banter tracks removed):

Martin Courtney
2016-02-13
Baby’s All Right
Brooklyn, NY USA

Exclusive download hosted at nyctaper.com
Recorded and live mixed by Jason Kelly
Produced by acidjack

Soundboard (main stereo mix) + Audio Technica 4051 (FOB, DFC, XY)>Pro Tools>4x24bit/48kHz WAV>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (align, mix down, adjust levels)>Izotope Ozone 5 (effects)>Audacity 2.0.5 (track, amplify, balance, downsample, dither)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks
01 Northern Highway (fades in)
02 Focus
03 [banter]
04 Foto
05 Asleep
06 Airport Bar
07 Awake
08 [banter2]
09 Little Blue
10 Before We Begin
11 Many Moons
12 Vestiges
13 [banter3]
14 Harvest Moon [Neil Young]
15 The Killing Moon [Echo & the Bunnymen]
16 [banter4]
17 On the Roof [The Feelies]*

* w/ EZTV

Support Martin Courtney at his website and by buying Many Moons from Domino.

Rangda: March 4, 2016 Saint Vitus

March 8, 2016
By

Rangda
[photos by PSquared Photography]

When the first Rangda record, False Flag, arrived in 2010, it was a transmission out of the multiverse—from an alternate reality where Corsano, Bishop, and Chasny wielded their instruments for evil instead of good. The roaring cacophonies bore titles like “Waldorf Hysteria,” “Bull Lore,” “Fist Family,” “Sarcophagi,” and “Serrated Edges” (to literally list in order the first five of the six songs on that record), ensuring that Rangda was not for the psych-tourist or those with pacemakers. At the time, who knew if these three could sustain this cosmic energy, or even find overlap in three busy touring schedules to make Rangda more than a one-off supergroup.

Two albums later, even if they aren’t the most prolific band out there, Rangda is sticking around. 2012’s Formerly Extinct softened their approach only slightly, trading in the instrumental clash for interlocking rhythms and something resembling rock songs. Their latest, The Heretics Bargain, continues on that trajectory, making Rangda downright palatable. Songs like “The Sin Eaters” and “Spiro Agnew” sound upbeat, anthemic even. But if the album itself isn’t proof Rangda is drawing the newly-initiated, last week saw the band play their largest yet NYC venue and crowd, with a set focused most-heavily on Formerly Extinct and the new material.

False Flag is here represented by the sole “Bull Lore.”  Formerly Extinct by “Majnun,” “Silver Nile,” “Idol’s Eye,” “The Vault,” and “Plugged Nickel.”  From The Heretic’s Bargain, it’s “The Sin Eaters,” “To Melt the Moon,” “Spiro Agnew,” and the song nearly as long as its title, “Mondays Are Free at the Hermetic Museum.” For opening night of their tour, the band is on fire. I can only imagine the many realities ahead.

Rangda may be coming to your very hometown! Full tour dates over at Drag City.

I recorded this set from our usual location at Saint Vitus, the room mics combined with a board feed from FOH Nick. I mixed those two sources, favoring the room sound. The quality is outstanding. Enjoy!

Download the complete show: [MP3/FLAC]

Stream the complete show:

Rangda

Rangda
2016-03-04
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) > Adobe Audition CC (align, mixdown, compression, normalize, fades) > Izotope Ozone 5 (EQ, exciter) > Audacity 2.0.5 (downsample, dither, tracking, tagging) > FLAC (16/44.1, level 8)

Tracks [56:36]
01. Majnun
02. The Sin Eaters
03. Bull Lore
04. [tuning]
05. To Melt the Moon
06. Silver Nile
07. [tuning]
08. Idol’s Eye
09. Spiro Agnew
10. [tuning]
11. The Vault
12. [tuning]
13. Plugged Nickel
14. [tuning]
15. Mondays Are Free at the Hermetic Museum

Support Rangda: Buy The Heretic’s Bargain and other records from Drag City

Wussy: March 4, 2016 Studio at Webster Hall

March 6, 2016
By

Wussy Webster 2
[photo by Jack Dash]

If you thought that the unqualified success that Wussy achieved as a result of their 2014 year’s best album Attica was the pinnacle of their career, then you’ve joined the long line of people who’ve underestimated this inspiring band. On Friday, Wussy released Forever Sounds and the record takes the band’s sound to higher levels than even the rarefied air of Attica. The opening track “Dropping Houses” is one of the biggest sounding songs the band has ever produced. Chuck Cleaver’s numbers are more confident and aggressive than his recent oeuvre (“She’s Killed Hundreds” and “Gone”) and his material is consistently strong. Lisa Walker continues to be an incredibly versatile performer with a spectrum of songs that draw from everything to hard rock/grunge (the previously mentioned “Dropping Houses”) to folk (the gorgeous “Majestic-12”). In between those poles are what may be her most perfectly realized rock song “Donny’s Death Scene” and her darkest number “Hand of God”. Forever Sounds is also the album where Wussy’s vocals are better than ever, the production is top notch, and the instrumentation is superb. AllMusic says that to call the album a “masterpiece” would be “premature”, but nevertheless its a “deeply satisfying work”. Of all of the positive reviews that have arrived for Forever Sounds, this seems to be the most accurate assessment of this superb record.

As fate would have it, Wussy arrived in NYC on the very day the album was released and played a show at a venue that is perhaps too modest for their current draw, but a place that has been a positive location for the group. We’ve seen them two prior times at The Studio at Webster Hall, and Wussy has played excellent shows each time. But on Friday, all of the planets aligned and Wussy played a show for the ages. The setlist surely consisted of a good dose of the new album (eight of the ten songs were played) but the band also featured some classic material, deep cuts, a cover that we’d seen before (“Ceremony”) and one thoroughly obscure cover. This show was also the longest shows we’ve seen Wussy play — a few seconds longer than the Knitting Factory show in 2014. The packed house seemed to agree, as the band was called back twice for multiple encores.

As we’ve noted often recently, Wussy will return to NYC to play an NYCTaper Presents show at Trans-Pecos on March 30. I can confirm that this show will consist of a very special setlist. And as there is no late night event at Pecos that night, the band will be permitted to play as long as they choose! Tickets are still available [HERE].

I recorded this set with the Schoeps clamped to the soundboard cage and mixed with a soundboard feed superbly done by house FOH David Fine. The result is an outstanding recording. Enjoy!

Download the Complete Show [MP3] / [FLAC]

Stream the Complete Show [minus banter tracks]:

Wussy
2016-03-04
Studio at Webster Hall
New York NY

Digital Master Recording
Soundboard + Audience Matrix

Soundboard [Engineer David Fine] + Schoeps CCM4u Cardioids > Sound Devices 744t > 2 x 24bit 48kHz wavs > Soundforge (post-production) > CDWave 1.95 (tracking) > TLH > flac (320 MP3 and tagging via Foobar)

Recorded and Produced by nyctaper

Setlist:
[Total Time 1:21:37]
01 [introduction]
02 She’s Killed Hundreds
03 Gone
04 Teenage Wasteland
05 Pizza King
06 Sidewalk Sale
07 Better Days
08 To The Lightning
09 [banter – record release]
10 Hello I’m a Ghost
11 Hand of God
12 [banter – Trans-Pecos]
13 Ceremony [New Order]
14 [banter – look]
15 Dropping Houses
16 [interlude]
17 Beautiful
18 [encore break]
19 Donny’s Death Scene
20 [banter – Dag Nasty]
21 Aliens In Our Midst [The Twinkeyz]
22 Pulverized
23 Airborne
24 [second encore break]
25 Rigor Mortis

SUPPORT Wussy: Website | Buy Forever Sounds | Bandcamp

Ty Segall & the Muggers: February 27, 2016 Webster Hall

March 3, 2016
By

Ty at Webster 2016 Will Oliver
[photo courtesy of Will Oliver at We All Want Someone]

Ty Segall has been all over this site for years, and the reason we keep coming back to his shows is the same reason that he sold out these two nights at Webster Hall last weekend: He’s one of the most exciting live acts around. Here with his latest band, the Muggers, Ty delivered a powerhouse 90-minute set that covered the entirety of the new Emotional Mugger album before delving into some of his best-loved jams from the past few years.

Compared to some of the more intimate Ty shows we’ve covered in the past, this first of the two Webster performances had all the ridiculousness and bombast of a Big Rock Show, with Segall hitting the stage in a mask to the tune of a baby crying. The first few songs felt both true to his garage roots and ridiculously over the top, with Segall barking his lyrics into the microphone, hurling himself into the crowd, and working overtime to try to turn the big room into some kind of facsimile of, say, Death By Audio circa 2012. As time went on though — particular into the lengthy jamming on “Feel” — what stood out most was the quality of the Muggers, who managed to undergird the shambolic moments with accomplished playing. That’s part of the great paradox and joy of Ty Segall, too — you’ve got a prolific performer with a great voice and pop sensibility, but who isn’t afraid to go wild, to get dirty, and to have fun. If you saw any of the New York acoustic shows in 2015 (almost all of which we covered), then you know what I mean. Most garage-rock singers would be lost playing acoustically on a stool — not only would their uneven skills be exposed, but the songs wouldn’t work without the fuzz. Segall doesn’t have that problem. His songs move crowds in any context. The show closed out with a stretched-out, saxophoned-up “The Singer,” both a tribute to the man himself, and his ability to capture a crowd no matter how big the tent.

I recorded this set with a soundboard feed and Schoeps MK41V supercardiod microphones. Even though we weren’t in a DIY venue, the sound bears many of those hallmarks: loud, in your face, and raw. The recording is true to that. Enjoy!

Download the complete show: [FLAC/MP3]

Stream the complete show:

Ty Segall & the Muggers
2016-02-27
Webster Hall
New York, NY USA

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

Soundboard (engineer: Ty’s FOH) + Schoeps MK41V (at SBD, DFC, PAS)>>Zoom F8>2x24bit/48kHz WAV>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (align, mix down)>Izotope Ozone 5 (EQ, effects, image)>Audacity 2.0.5 (track, amplify, downsample, dither)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks
01 Squealer
02 Californian Hills
03 Emotional Mugger/Leopard Priestess
04 Breakfast Eggs
05 Diversion
06 Baby Big Man (I Want A Mommy)
07 [jamming]
08 Mandy Cream
09 Candy Sam
10 Squealer Two
11 The Magazine
12 Thank God For Sinners
13 They Told Me Too
14 You’re the Doctor
15 [banter1]
16 Spiders
17 Manipulator
18 Feel
19 [encore break]
20 Finger
21 The Feels
22 The Singer

Visit Ty Segall on the web, and buy Emotional Mugger from Drag City here.

Bambara: February 25, 2016 Palisades

March 2, 2016
By

IMG_1654

The Brooklyn post-punk band Bambara knows how to make noise. This show at Palisades, to celebrate the forthcoming release of their album, Swarm, this Friday (March 4), proved what those who’ve been paying attention already knew — that this band has the charisma, and the delivery, to take them beyond Bushwick DIY stages. They’ve already had a taste of that, of course, having toured with site favorites METZ and A Place to Bury Strangers, among others. But Swarm, the band’s first professionally-recorded effort, shows this band’s possibilities. It’s a gloomy, late-night sort of effort, sustained by its rhythmic appeal and the band’s dead-on delivery. In the live setting, they don’t hold back, with frontman Reid Bateh anchoring the effort with his considerable onstage charisma while his brother Blaze hammers the drums along to William Brookshire’s bass. This show covered some of the standout tracks on Swarm, as well as favorites from the band’s debut, Dreamviolence. You’ll have plenty of opportunities to see the band around NYC in the near future, with upcoming gigs at Berlin and Saint Vitus.

I made this recording with Schoeps MK22 open cardiod microphones at the stage lip plus a soundboard feed from Palisades FOH Leeor. While the sound is a little off balance (a tad heavy on bass guitar) it is overall a high quality listen. Stream the full show (minus banter) plus the available tracks from Swarm below as well. Enjoy!

Download the complete show: [MP3/FLAC/ALAC]

Bambara
2016-02-25
Palisades
Brooklyn, NY USA

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

Schoeps MK22 (ORTF, stage lip)>NBob cables>PFA + Soundboard (engineer: Leeor)>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (align, mix down, narrow onstage image)>Izotope Ozone 5 (effects)>Audacity 2.0.3 (track, amplify, downsample, dither)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks
01 Her Sister, Touya
02 Filled Up With Night
03 All the Same
04 [banter1]
05 An Ill Son
06 [banter2]
07 Stop
08 All the Ugly Things
09 I Don’t Mind

Check out Bambara on Facebook, and pre-order Swarm from Arrowhawk Records here.

Animal Collective: February 24, 2016 Irving Plaza

February 28, 2016
By

Animal Collective3
[photos courtesy of Will and We All Want Someone blog]

In the early years of the last decade when the speed of the web aligned with the availability of high quality audio files, I went on a binge downloading all of the available Animal Collective live recordings from their page at the Live Music Archive and from various torrent sites. In 2007 I was finally able to see the band live. For the shows I recorded at Webster Hall shows that year, I had expected the band to play the live songs for which I was quite familiar, but those two historic Webster shows were heavy on new songs — my introduction to the material that would eventually become the band’s brilliant breakthrough album Merriweather Post Pavilion. I’m not so sure I was prepared for what would come next. When Animal Collective released MPP to overwhelmingly positive reviews, I recorded the first two shows in New York and the attention we received literally crashed the site. I learned a lot about the potential for this site to reach a large audience but also the mixed bag nature of viral material, and NYCTaper was forever inextricably intertwined with the music of Animal Collective. To this day, the recording for Animal Collective at Manhattan Center has been downloaded over 50,000 times and remains the most circulated of all of our recordings.

In the intervening years, we’ve had intermittent opportunities to capture the band live including some memorable solo shows. There was the secret Glasslands show with Avey Tare and Deakin that introduced us to that amazing venue (RIP) and to the material that would eventually become Oddsac. Our recording of Panda Bear at Governor’s Island in 2010 was so successful that the artist actually released a limited version of the recording as a free bonus download with the album Tomboy. There was a pair of Deakin shows in 2010, a terrific solo show by Avey Tare at Knitting Factory in 2011, and then a full band show at Terminal 5 in 2012. But we’ve never quite captured the magic of the MPP shows and the rabid interest those 2009 recordings generated.

Its now more than decade since my first obsession with Animal Collective and fortunately 2016 finds us both in very good places. The band’s new album is called Painting With and its quite an excellent piece of work and undoubtedly their strongest material since Merriweather Post Pavilion. The tour in support of the album is being played in smaller venues than anything since the small MPP shows and the feel of this tour is similar. There’s an excitement surrounding the band, the album and the shows that harkens back to 2009 and its a great feeling to have back. At Irving Plaza on Wednesday night, Animal Collective played a virtually flawless ninety-minute show that featured most of the new album, one bizarro cover, and several deep cuts from some of the earliest releases. Indeed, the final song of the night “Alvin Row” goes all the way back to the band’s first album, Spirit They’re Gone, Spirit They’ve Vanished. The venue was absolutely packed — I was pushed up against the soundboard cage for the entire night — but the crowd was entirely involved in the show. There is literally no yapping at all recognizable on this recording. And the band played off the energy coming from the crowd as this performance was top notch from start to finish. Indeed, the band only took two song breaks as they segued most of the songs from the main set, and the three encore songs flow as one.

The current Animal Collective tour continues throughout the Spring, moving West and then spending much of April in Europe before the band returns to the US in May. There is a show on May 14 in Sayreville NJ that we are going to try to record, but our attendance is not yet confirmed.

I recorded this set with my old Neumann KM-150 hypercardioids (the same mics as Bowery in 2009) from a prime position directly in front of the soundboard on the floor. The sound in the venue was phenomenal and this recording is quite superb. Enjoy!

Download the Complete Show in FLAC or MP3 format at Archive.org [HERE]

Stream the Complete Show:

Animal Collective
2016-02-24
Irving Plaza
New York NY

Digital Master Recording
Front of Board Audience

Neumann KM-150s > Sound Devices 744t > 24bit 48kHz wav file > Soundforge (post-production) > CDWave 1.95 (tracking) > TLH > flac (320 MP3 and tagging via Foobar)

Recorded and Produced by nyctaper

Setlist:
[Total Time 1:31:07]
01 Natural Selection
02 Gnip Gnop
03 Hocus Pocus
04 The Burglars
05 Jimmy Mack [Vandellas]
06 Daily Routine
07 Golden Gal
08 Summing the Wretch
09 On Delay
10 Loch Raven
11 FloriDada
12 [encore break]
13 Bees
14 Lying in the Grass
15 Alvin Row

SUPPORT ANIMAL COLLECTIVE: Website | Buy Painting With | Facebook

SUPPORT NYCTaper




Email

Email nyctaper

DISCLAIMER and LEGAL NOTICE

nyctaper.com is a live music blog that offers a new paradigm of music distribution on the web. The recordings are offered for free on this site as are the music posts, reviews and links to artist sites. All recordings are posted with artist permission or artists with an existing pro-taping policy.

All recordings and original content posted on this site are @nyctaper.com as live recordings pursuant to 17 U.S.C. Section 106, et. seq. Redistribution of nyctaper recordings without consent of nyctaper.com is strictly prohibited.

nyctaper.com hereby waives all copyright claims to any and all recordings posted on this site to THE PERFORMERS ONLY. If any artist posted on this site requests that recordings be removed, those recordings will be removed forthwith.