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Monday, June 22

Crystal Castles Tangle With Security at Sonar Festival in Barcelona

Barcelona! Where bands bug out onstage! Crystal Castles Tangle With Security at Sonar Festival in Barcelona

Photo by Matthew Taplinger

It's hard to tell what's going on during a Crystal Castles show. The Toronto electro-punk duo has been known to keep a strobe light on full-blast the entire time they're onstage, and eventually it starts to make you see things. At one New York show, I could've sworn I saw singer Alice Glass bite off some unlucky audience member's face, but it turns out that didn't actually happen.

At a show this weekend in Spain, though, Glass was the cause of some onstage carnage, according to NME. (Apparently, Spanish festivals are where North American bands go to lose their shit these days.) Early Sunday morning, the group were playing a set at Barcelona's Sónar Festival. When sound problems got to be too much for Alice Glass, she started violently pulling apart her band's drumkit and throwing it at security guards. Then, when security attempted to restrain her, someone-- either Glass or bandmate Ethan Kath-- threw a punch at a guard.

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Rhino Releases L.A. Nuggets Box Set

Rhino Releases L.A. Nuggets Box Set

Rhino's stellar series of Nuggets sets exists to rescue all the hundreds and hundreds of unappreciated bits of punked-up garage-rock weirdness that the 60s left behind. And you'd never believe how much of this stuff there is. On September 22, Rhino will release the latest entry in this series, Where the Action Is! Los Angeles Nuggets 1965-1968. It's four CDs dedicated entirely to snarly fuzz-bombs created in L.A. during a four-year period. On paper, that's an incredibly specific set of specifications, but the Rhino folks have still rounded up 101 songs that fit the bill.

The set, which includes an info-packed coffee table book, includes everyone from Time-Life staples like the Doors and Sonny & Cher to relatively unheralded but awesomely named groups like the W.C. Fields Memorial Electric String Band, London Phogg, and the Everpresent Fullness. Pitchfork heroes like the Beach Boys, Captain Beefheart, Love, and Lee Hazlewood also make appearances. The set also includes three previously unreleased tracks, including one from Tim Buckley.

Tracklist below:

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Echo Chamber: Death Cab's Chris Walla

Echo Chamber: Death Cab's Chris Walla

"I barely knew who Perez Hilton was before this morning, but now I wanna punch him too."

-- Death Cab for Cutie's Chris Walla, unlikely ally of the Black Eyed Peas. (via @Jumex)

Posted by Amy Phillips on June 22, 2009 at 3:30 p.m.

Tags: Chris Walla, Death Cab for Cutie, Echo Chamber

 

Watch Jack White's New Band Right Now! Live on "From the Basement"!

The Dead Weather, streaming "From the Basement"! Watch Jack White's New Band Right Now! Live on "From the Basement"!

UPDATE: It's Over! Hope you enjoyed it. We'll keep you posted if the performance is archived.

At 4 p.m. Eastern time today-- that's right now, pretty much-- Jack White's new band the Dead Weather will play their first European show. "From the Basement", Nigel Godrich's web TV show, is hosting the performance, and we've got it here for you as well. Enjoy!

Posted by Tom Breihan on June 22, 2009 at 3 p.m.

Tags: The Dead Weather, TV, video

 

A Sunny Day in Glasgow Announce Second Album

Ashes Grammar, due September A Sunny Day in Glasgow Announce Second Album

Scribble Mural Comic Journal, the debut album from A Sunny Day in Glasgow, established the Philly dream-pop crew as one of the few psych-pop bands willing to do more than play around in the shadow of Loveless. The album's 13 tracks went in at least 13 different directions, from the muffled jangle of "A Mundane Phonecall to Jack Parsons" to the glimmering soft-focus Orb-isms of "5:15 Train".

On September 15, the band will return with a new album called Ashes Grammar, due via Mis Ojos Discos. And while we haven't heard the thing yet, we do know that it opens with an homage to the composer Arvo Pärt, so we're thinking they're not done pushing boundaries.

The album is the result of, among other things, band members Ben Daniels and Josh Meakim renting a cavernous New Jersey dance studio and using it to play around with sounds.

The cover is above, and the tracklist is below.

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T.V. Eye: June 22-28

T.V. Eye: June 22-28

Live music on T.V. this week:

Monday, June 22:

NBC: Late Night With Jimmy Fallon: Sonic Youth, the Roots (house band)
FUEL: The Daily Habit: The Juan Maclean
CBS: Late Show With David Letterman: Iggy Pop and the Brighton Port Authority
NBC: Tonight Show With Conan O'Brien: Pete Yorn
NBC: Last Call With Carson Daly: Black Kids (rerun)

Tuesday, June 23:

NBC: Late Night With Jimmy Fallon: Iggy Pop and the Brighton Port Authority, the Roots (house band)
CBS: Late Show With David Letterman: MSTRKRFT with John Legend
NBC: Last Call With Carson Daly: Crocodiles
NBC: Tonight Show With Conan O'Brien: Elvis Costello

Wednesday, June 24:

NBC: Tonight Show With Conan O'Brien: Wilco
CBS: Late Show With David Letterman: St. Vincent
ABC: Jimmy Kimmel Live: Bat for Lashes
NBC: Late Night With Jimmy Fallon: The Roots
NBC: Last Call With Carson Daly: Ida Maria
PBS: Tavis Smiley: Femi Kuti
CBS: Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson: Bettye Lavette

Thursday, June 25:

NBC: Late Night With Jimmy Fallon: Dinosaur Jr., the Roots (house band)
NBC: Last Call With Carson Daly: Bat for Lashes

Friday, June 26:

NBC: Late Night With Jimmy Fallon: Grizzly Bear, the Roots (house band)
ABC: Jimmy Kimmel Live: Phoenix, David Cross
CBS: Late Show With David Letterman: Regina Spektor
CBS: Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson: Chairlift
NBC: Tonight Show With Conan O'Brien: Snoop Dogg, Adele

Saturday, June 27:

PBS: Austin City Limits: Crowded House (rerun)
NBC: Saturday Night Live: Kings of Leon (rerun)

Posted by Tom Breihan on June 22, 2009 at 1:45 p.m.

Tags: TV Eye

 

Video: Clipse [featuring Kanye West]: "Kinda Like a Big Deal"

I never thought I'd live to see the day when Kanye West would absolutely brutalize Malice and Pusha T on their own song. But it happened, and the resulting jam, "Kinda Like a Big Deal", still bangs pretty hard.

The first single from Clipse's forthcoming Till the Casket Drops LP now has a video. The clip seems to take place entirely in awesomely lit stairwells and freight elevators. These guys are just too cool for actual nightclubs, I guess. (via Spinner)

Posted by Tom Breihan on June 22, 2009 at 1:10 p.m.

Tags: Clipse, Kanye West, video

 

Radiohead/Wilco/Marr/Finn Supergroup Benefit Album Details Revealed

Radiohead's Phil Selway makes vocal debut. Radiohead/Wilco/Marr/Finn Supergroup Benefit Album Details Revealed

This past winter, former Crowded House/Split Enz frontman Neil Finn assembled a dizzying cast of music luminaries in New Zealand. Johnny Marr, Radiohead's Ed O'Brien and Phil Selway, Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, John Stirratt, Glenn Kotche, and Pat Sansone, and plenty of others got together with Finn to record a follow-up to Finn's all-star 2001 album 7 Worlds Collide. The album will be a benefit for Oxfam International. Now, NME reports that it'll be out on August 10.

NME says that the album, titled The Sun Came Out, will be a double album, and it'll feature the singing debut of Radiohead drummer Selway. And according to NME, Marr collaborated with Wilco on the song "Too Blue". The tracklist, via NME, is below.

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Wu-Tang Clan Brings Us Chamber Music

Wu-Tang Clan Brings Us <i>Chamber Music</i>

It's not quite the same thing as a Wu-Tang Clan group album, but the forthcoming Chamber Music compilation, due June 30 from E1 Music/Universal, is a welcome flashback to the era when it felt like a new Wu-affiliated album came out every week. For this one, the Brooklyn soul crew the Revelations laid down backing tracks, which Clan abbot the RZA oversaw and edited. You know you're dealing with a genuine Wu-Tang project when there are songs called "Radiant Jewels" and "Enlightened Statues" on there.

Six Wu-Tang members show up at least once on the album: RZA, Ghostface Killah, Raekwon, Inspectah Deck, U-God, and Masta Killa. Various other veterans of New York rap's hoodies-and-Tims era also show up, including Sean Price, Masta Ace, Cormega, M.O.P., and Kool G Rap.

The leaked tracks "Harbor Masters" and "Ill Figures" make this thing sound like some serious heady throwback evilness, the kind of thing that will keep us wearing out our rewind buttons until Only Built 4 Cuban Linx II finally comes out.

Tracklist below.

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TVOTR's Kyp Malone Signs to Anti- for Solo Project, Rain Machine

TVOTR's Kyp Malone Signs to Anti- for Solo Project, Rain Machine

Photo by Eric Martin

Kyp Malone is going solo. TV on the Radio's prodigiously bearded, falsetto-voiced zen master has a solo project, and he's calling it Rain Machine. This fall, the first Rain Machine album will be released on Anti-.

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