Hi all. Nick Wan here. Now that I’m free for the summer (barring starting my new job, moving out of my place and into a new one, and attending my friend’s wedding), the show season begins for me again. Below is a list of shows I’m most likely going to. All of them are highly recommended! I suggest tagging along with me. You can shoot me a line over on Twitter, or email me nick at 402productions dot com.
Plants and Animals @ Bottom of the Hill 5/18
They are touring in support of their latest release, The End of That. Last time they came around I didn’t have a chance to catch them, so tomorrow seems like a good night.
Dum Dum Girls @ The Blank Club 5/21
Recently billed for Maha Music Festival. Hoping their live show is awesome. It’s punky. It’s loud. I can only assume it’ll be a dance party.
The Avengers @ The New Parish 5/25
Just an all out punk show. I also love that venue.
Cr33P0cH @ Outer Planes Comics and Games 5/26
I normally hate chiptunes and 8-bit music, but Cr33P0cH’s CD release party in Santa Rosa has a few things going for it: 1) it’s in a comic book store that has never thrown a show before. Those are always fun. 2) Cr33P0cH is actually one of my good friends from back home, so I would love to be there to see him perform his stuff live for the first time. And 3) I’m actually opening for this show. If you’re in the North Bay, let me know!
Hugh Laurie @ Great America Music Hall 5/27
Dr. Gregory House and company won’t be seeing another season, but this does pave the way for Laurie to finally promote his music career (if that is what he wants to do for a few years). His blues style, sprinkled through House episodes, is actually fairly on point. I’m assuming this is a must-see show, as his west coast touring dates are far and few.
Mogwai @ Regency Ballroom 6/1
No explanation needed. And honestly, if you were one of the lucky ones to have seen Godspeed AND Explosions in the same week, Mogwai would most likely just be more icing on your post-rock cake this year.
Generally, I feel weird reviewing albums from close friends. The whole objective review sort of gets thrown out the window when you try to play softball with a friend’s album. Luckily, Alvin Pingol, most popular on the web for his instrumental covers of remix artist Pogo, doesn’t really need my help garnishing popularity or praise. Nor will he take offense to my snarky comments about his album. Rather, Pingol’s debut instrumental album Make Them Walk Like a Robot seems to stand alone from the “albums from friends” pile.
Check out what made Alvin famous below.
I’m obviously a proponent for instrumental jams. I mean… look at my track record. I’m a pretty easy guy to please. Normally, as I’ve discussed before, the hype music culture via YouTube sensationalism isn’t really effective in forming something more than just a cash cow. Rather, it’s a delivery system that feeds off the same energy the radio does: over produced tracks with shitty live performances. Usually the bottom of the barrel stems from the people who get famous off of a cover and then fail to impress with their original music. A few bands from the early 2000s come to mind: The Ataris and Alien Ant Farm both had huge radio rock hits from updated renditions of popular 80s songs. However, both groups never were able to surge past their cover song stardom with a follow up single that was equally as large or larger. Some acts are able to seemingly pull through, for better or for worse. Limp Bizkit‘s rise to fame was initiated by their TRL smash cover of “Faith”. Of recent memory, Karmin was able to take a step onto a larger stage after their ironic-yet-on-point cover of Chris Brown’s “Look At Me Now”. Of late and most notably, Aretha Franklin and “Respect”… well, you get the picture.
The large problem with cover-ers and their “style” is that they usually get pigeonholed by just doing covers. Take Pingol’s YouTube channel for example. With his home movies aside, the music he is promoting are his covers. There isn’t a mix of original tracks and some covers on the side. It’s a tragedy if you end up typecasting yourself. So, making it out of this hole you’ve begun to dug seems to be quite the feat.
Make Them Walk Like a Robot is definitely a way out. Self-described as alt-rock and indie pop, Pingol threads a needle through an eclectic set of styles and sounds using practically every instrument available to him. And that is something I don’t have to guess at, since I know Alvin’s bedroom studio and instrument library is limited to the equipment in his home, a baby grand piano at another friend’s home, and random doo-dahs he has Craigslisted. In all, Pingol’s debut album is seemingly an attempt to separate himself from his YouTube self — the professional artist versus the hobby artist.
Check out the entire album below!
The Pros
Alvin Pingol doesn’t fail to impress in terms of multi-instrumentation. It’s obviously not extremely uncommon to see a single artist play every instrument on the record, and Pingol is no exception. However, the separation of being able to do it and being able to do it with care is fairly large — one that takes a different set of skills, like patience and discipline and knowing what actually works and what actually is shit. This album seems to be well pruned, both on the player’s side and the producer’s side. The voicing instrument throughout the album is guitar, which would be an easy guess if you’re familiar with Pingol’s cover work. The accompanying instruments aren’t just a slathering of electronic pish-posh, which one may have guessed as his affinity for Pogo is something of note. Rather, it’s a mixed beast between a full-band set of instruments and some synth and pad drum accompaniment.
I would argue the album truly starts with track two, “Alan and the Blue Whale”, as it showcases the meat and potatoes of the album pretty clearly. Pingol’s guitar work isn’t based around being a total shredder, riffing up and down the fretboard. He’s a bit more precise as a guitarist. The pop styling doesn’t give rise to any slasher solos, so the emphasis on interesting melodic riffs plays a premium in keeping the listeners attention. For the most part, where the guitar lacks the piano helps out. Pingol’s jazz-fusion piano style plays into the whole package, as he is really trying to go for more of a bouncy and fun album rather than a think-and-dwell instrumental adventure.
The underlying tone of the album rests in this partially electronic pop and partially pop guitar rock vibe. What layers over are tons of different genres and styles. Pingol is relatively fearless in trying to incorporate a myriad of genres with his backbone guitar pop, ranging from instrumental hip hop, to folk, to flares of glitch pop and ambient pop. He cleans up most of his signal through some heavy post-production, incorporating those glitchy pans that Pogo is known for. In essence, “Careless Air Removal Specialists” is more of a dedication to the man who Pingol has become popularized by. whereas tracks like “Fizzy Root James” and the title-track “Make Them Walk Like a Robot” is more of Pingol’s strength.
The Cons
The creativity falls upon the artist, of course. And a single artist in his room alone with his thoughts may not be the strongest drummer or bassist, especially when you’ve played guitar and piano for the majority of your boredom. With that, the cons really do fall upon the rhythm sections of the album. At times, it’s real cheesy. GarageBand like. Pingol does try to freshen up the sound by incorporating both TR-808 clones mixed with his own set of acoustic drums but the steady 4/4 rhythm and all-too-easy predictability of the jam makes the drum and bass really fall into the background in a bad way. It’s no coincidence that the front instruments of piano and guitars are normally the most complex, but leaving the complexity out of the rhythm section turns this album from being something extremely interesting to just a solid listen-through. This isn’t to say Pingol lacks in drum or bass skills, as a handful of the tracks do show off his subtle cymbal pattern intricacies as well as creamy bass lines (“Alan and the Blue Whale”; “Catpaw Smooth Vegetable”), but it is to say that the idea on paper might not have been the best idea in application.
The pacing of the album is also a little off. The album really jumps around in terms of track listing. The track listing may have been a far after thought, as Pingol probably didn’t have many (or any) b-sides for this album. For instance, “Paradise Gardens Marinade” is so awkward sandwiched between “Larsen’s Biscuits” and “Alan and the Blue Whale”. That track on it’s own doesn’t really hold as much water as the other two that sandwich it either, which may have been reason to turn it into b-side if Pingol had either 1) the wherewithal to 86 a track from his self-made debut album or 2) a third-party producer. Many instrumental albums that I normally give a thumbs up to usually pay very close attention to track listing and/or pacing, as it can turn your album from a work of art to playlist fodder. Unfortunately for Pingol, shuffling the tracks on the album or throughout a playlist doesn’t change the overall meaning of the songs in a set. Although, if Pingol was wanting such an eclectic set of songs in the first place, he might not mind being playlist shuffle fodder.
Then again, the idea that your album is just a bunch of good, solid songs you wrote in your bedroom doesn’t necessarily make the album a good album. In my listen through, it took me a really long time to decide whether these songs would be mediocre in comparison to the other instrumental songs I have on my playlist. In short, yeah they would be. I wouldn’t mind listening to this, but compared to something like Toe or Sharks Keep Moving I feel that Pingol may just be literally the opener songs before the big boys come on. This isn’t to say it’s a bad deal for Make Them Walk Like a Robot, because in a general sense… it’s good enough to be thrown on a playlist with those bands and a strange assortment of instrumental and ambient music (Vince Guaraldi Trio, Anamanaguchi, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Sigur Ros to name a few), and that’s quite the accomplishment in my opinion. On the other hand, the division between a good listen and a home run hitter is a fairly large one for this album. One can only hope the next time Pingol finds the time to track out another handful of songs, he’ll really push the limits for all angles.
The Verdict
As a friend, this album was awesome. As a reviewer, you could have done a lot more. You know this though.
Does this put Alvin out of his YouTube cover shadow? No. If he has collected any fans (most likely he has) through his channel, this album will be a nice listen. But the divide between this album and his covers are also pretty large. This album showcases Pingol as a extremely strong musician whereas his covers showcase what some guy could do if he had some free time and played guitar well. That’s not to take anything away from his covers, as they took probably hours and days to put together (video and all), but let’s be honest… I’m sure many of you readers can think of a friend who is a very talented musician that could do what Pingol did in his covers. What Pingol did on his debut album is something the friend you’re thinking of most likely wouldn’t have done, which is what really puts Pingol in a new light.
In general, the album’s lack of creative rhythm sections at least rising to a complexity that the piano and guitar have to offer really pumps the breaks on the album. The guitar work and piano work is fantastic, and I would love to see Alvin Pingol pair up with an equally gifted pianist/guitarist to take this act on the road, but an addition of a bassist and drummer wouldn’t be necessary. Something to relate this to would be one of my all time favorites, Owen. The Owen studio albums are truly complete works of art, where Mike Kinsella showcases his guitar work and vocals first with a rich backing of accompanying instruments, many similar to the ones Pingol uses on his album. However, those tracks live are just played with Kinsella on the guitar and singing. All the songs take on a completely different vibe and feel live. For Pingol, I don’t believe I would get that same feeling, albeit being very impressed with his guitar playing and piano playing live. I would hope that the next outing expands as much as he expanded on his guitar and piano work for all the other areas he may have missed out on.
Our photographer David Wajfelner was on the scene during tUnE-yArDs and St. Vincent in Oakland the other week. tUnE-yArDs was noted to be trying to start up a Kickstarter for an Oakland “school of rock” where kids get to learn how to rock out, essentially. So far, she is pretty close to the goal! She’s trying to provide a library of instruments to the kids who are a part of the rock project. As for St. Vincent, she was a shredder and ended up crowd surfing at some point. Check out shots of the surf, the rock kids, and of course the artists below in the roll!
Marriages is a band that stems from Red Sparowes, consisting of 60% of Red Sparowes: Emma Ruth Rundle (vocals, guitar), Greg Burns (bass, synth), and Dave Clifford (drums). Kitsune, the Japanese word for fox, is a classic legend where the kitsune can become a human and have wisdom and power as they have more tails. On top of this, kitsune also lives extremely close to humans and normally is seen playing tricks or stirring up trouble among people.
With all of that in mind, I went into the album hoping for a sort of power struggle feel. On top of that, I was really interested to find out about Rundle’s vocals, since word on the street said she had some pretty killer pipes. And of course, seeing the differences that make Marriages not just Red Sparowes with vocals would be something of note.
Listen to the entire thing below!
The Pros
I feel like I’m always stressing seamless albums — no breaks or filler, meant to be listened to from the first track all the way through the last — and I get that from Kitsune. The album itself is no slouch in time, clocking in just under 30-minutes, but feels much shorter. It’s not the pace of the band either, as the majority of songs range in that head-bobbing 100-140 BPM range. The only thing I can think of was how smooth the entire album plays, with the planned song transitions bringing a sort of live set feel to the entire album.
There are some glaring similarities between Marriages and Red Sparowes. For one, the entire tone just feels like that heavy, dark Red Sparowes-esque post rock. That’s not a bad thing by any means however, and is elaborated on with the introduction of vocals. The song structuring is still progressive in nature, with parts of songs being repeated maybe twice at most. The weird descriptor I may use is “catchy”. By no means do I mean poppy or even upbeat, but rather instantly memorable. “Ride In My Place” has this extremely hummable bass line that I would assume everyone to get stuck in their head after a listen. A handful of tracks from Kitsune has that quality: getting stuck in your head, which is something that Red Sparowes never really tried to expand upon. Catchy doom is frankly more appealing to me.
Rundle’s vocals are definitely fire. She sings generally in a lower chamber but has flares of her range like in the track “Ten Tiny Fingers”. Most of the lyrical accompaniment is more ethereal than it is singer-songwriter-y. This style is completely more fitting to the entire package of Marriages as a band, and would have been fairly awkward to hear Rundle have any more emphasis vocally as it would have taken away from the aura of the album. Her guitar work goes without saying — fantastic. With her as the only guitarist in the crew it’s easy to see why she was a great addition to Red Sparowes. Red Sparowes in general aren’t necessarily known for being a cast of shredders, but Rundle definitely has some awesome showcasing of guitar work on Kitsune. In the same vein, Burns’ bass work is pretty spectacular in its own right. However, there are flashes of brilliance throughout Burns’ bass work on Red Sparowes. Hearing him shred it up, like on “White Shape”, is welcomed but not necessarily surprising. Clifford’s drum work falls in the same arena as Burns’ bass work: welcomed and expected.
For me, “White Shape” was my favorite track on the album. However, it should be stated again: this isn’t playlist fodder. It’s best experienced from the first track to the last.
The Cons
I was hoping for something more experimental, honestly. Strange timings, strange quirky instruments, possibly even something more upbeat. I didn’t get that. The album itself definitely takes on its own character, but doesn’t really show the range of where Marriages could go. It’s heavy, it’s dark, it’s basically Red Sparowes with vocals, but what else is it? Or can it be anything else?
“Part The Dark Again” gave me the most Red Sparowes vibe out of the songs. All the other songs felt different from Red Sparowes to me… felt like Marriages. “Part The Dark Again” didn’t. I got the vibe of “Red Sparowes B-side with vocals”. That’s definitely not what I wanted from this album. But that basically goes with the first con I stated: there may not be much separating Marriages from Red Sparowes. This obviously plays into their comfortability and strengths but is also a fairly conservative play.
The Verdict
This album has been a mainstay on my player since I got it. I personally love this kind of music. However, taking a step back and seeing the bigger picture is a bit harder. There are seemingly more similarities than there are differences between Red Sparowes and Marriages, which can be a bit polarizing. On one hand, the people who love Red Sparowes and that general sound and feel will fall in love with Marriages pretty easily. On the other hand, the fans of Red Sparowes who have heard about this new side project they put together called Marriages may be going into it expecting something different than what Red Sparowes has to offer. Essentially, the nuances that make Marriages different from Red Sparowes are more subtle than they are blatant, even with vocals included.
Marriages’ Kitsune is probably one of my favorite albums of the year, next to another Sargent House Records release with Good Old War‘s Come Back As Rain. The dark and at times dreamy vibe is something I’d be interested in seeing live from these guys.
Wild Flag played at The Fillmore in San Francisco last Wednesday, on 4/18. The city was definitely split between a ton of Coachella 2012 veterans that night: Gotye, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and Refused. However, EMA and Wild Flag was the choice for our very talented photographer, Annie Tsui. And by the sounds of it, if you missed this one you missed Wild Flag’s Fugazi cover of “Margin Walker”. Check her site out here. And check out the roll below for Wild Flag shots!
The openers for Explosions in the Sky at The Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco on April 16th and 17th were not announced prior to tickets being on sale. And, to be honest, it seems that Zammuto had no idea until around a month after the show was announced. Only a handful of people were privy to Nick Zammuto’s post-The Books crew opening — me not being one of them. So the surprise to end up finding out that it truly was half of The Books in a new suit was pretty amazing.
The Books needs no introduction I feel, as I can recall many early college years with my dear friend Sebastian Vermette in his room or dark room blasting The Lemon of Pink. What was most impressive about The Books was their ability to translate their unique style into a visual show live, with quirky and charming word play and visual stimuli that accented the songs remarkably well. Zammuto (comprised of brothers Nick and Mikey, drummer Sean Dixon, and The Books contributor Gene Back on keys/guitar) also brought a visual aspect to their abstract and experimental music that also was both quirky and charming, but also hilarious at times with features from old Zammuto family home movies and pin-point editing jobs for obscure how-to videos.
The live show was very fun, and made me fall in love with whatever band was on stage. Having no knowledge that Zammuto was the company performing the act gave me a real crisp edge for this review, as I don’t have to reach back into my past memories of The Books and comparing Zammuto to something else. Rather, I was more interested to see how well their latest self-titled album, released April 3rd, translated to the stage. Or I guess… how their stage show reflected their latest album.
You can stream the entire album below!
The Pros
The thing that was stood out live and on the album was the vocals. For some, and for me for my first few seconds, the vocals won’t be a very strong plus. On the album, the glitchy and effect-ladened vocals seem like a language for robots. However, being able to see Nick Zammuto perform this live sort of sends a bias towards those who have experienced the live show first — the recreation of the vocals from the album to the stage becomes something of technical expertise and less of an Imogen Heap rip. When the effects aren’t blasting, Nick Zammuto does have quite the voice, showing that the effects may be over the top but not because he’s trying to hide himself vocally. Rather, it becomes a nice way to loose yourself in the music entirely.
The album is built upon many instruments, seemingly, with guitars being constant in most orchestration. At times, the bloops and bleeps from a chime or random percussion instrument gives this endless feeling of instruments being pulled out of the closet and strummed or hit once then thrown back whence it came. The unpredictable swirl of music Zammuto builds is harder to dissect, instrument-by-instrument, as the many instruments aside from vocals and guitar share only in a handful of what makes up the entire pie, so to speak. On the album, it’s hard to speak to the strengths of one instrument of another as they all sort of share the same amount of the responsibility in creating the Zammuto sound. Live, however, the drumming from Sean Dixon was definitely noteworthy. That man is a machine. Which is sort of a dichotomy between album and live, as the drumming on the album doesn’t sound particularly spectacular or intricate. However, once can imagine this is by design. The strange feeling I get when listening to this and seeing how it was played out came with the thoughts of how can they piece together all of this and make it sound anywhere near as good? I suppose my actual question was how can they take everything they just did on stage and make it wow me on an album? That design, of having a hard perception of how the action of this music comes about, seems fairly difficult to create. I do believe Zammuto strived for that sort of confusion though. Every piece of this band live was outstanding. The album shows another layer of Zammuto that is equally impressive.
The Cons
The thing some new listeners who didn’t come in through The Books may be challenged with is trying to figure out what the hell Zammuto is. In short, that’s exactly what they want. But the aurally simplistic tones (which are actually subtly complex and not “simple”) may lead itself to aurally unchallenging. In the realm of glitch and experimental, I feel that part of the attraction is the challenge to figure out what the hell is going — whether that is due to technical performance or the actual sound up of the music. In the case of Zammuto, it’s easy to listen to and sounds like some airy jam band with too many effects. I mean… for many people who aren’t coming into Zammuto from The Books or from the “glitch-aficionado” arena, something easy to listen to that sounds like a weird jam band is actually… pretty… appealing.
Another con is that their album does not do their live show justice at all. I would almost want this album released with the video accompaniment, like The Books’ Playall DVD — a mainstay on Sebastian’s projector whenever we had a party at his place. But even then, the visuals do not help “solve the mystery” of how it all comes together live. That truly is a treat to be seen. And although this con isn’t much about the album at all, nor is it really a con, Zammuto live is a must see.
With that, maybe the con is that the live show touches on bases that the album doesn’t. There is a true sense of killer musicianship on that stage but on the album it seems buried under the wall of music. Either medium is fine, but almost is dual-purpose. Maybe what I’m getting at is that there is a loose connection I feel between the album and the stage, although both are amazing in their own rights.
The Verdict
Listen to this album. It’s been on replay for me for the past four hours. Seriously. The flow of the album matches my California winter and early spring exactly. I don’t really know what the hell that last sentence was suppose to mean either. I know that you aren’t really suppose to over-think this album, and rightfully so. Enjoy it for what it sounds like and try not to be a d-bag like me and dissect it. It’s good and I would recommend it to you. That should have been the review in the first place.
Press kits are the easiest and most universal way to get your new music into the hands of people who matter (press, labels, management, etc). Unfortunately, there isn’t any one definitive primer that says what should be in a press kit — and more importantly, what shouldn’t be in a press kit. For people like us at 402, press kits are essential. So, for the artists without a PR company helping them out with their press kits, this is a simple guide to tell you what you should have in your kit and what you shouldn’t have.
And before you anal readers get on my case — I know this is a pie chart and not a flow chart. Sue me.
Current artist bio
This is the main information everyone should know about you and what you’re promoting, whether it’s an upcoming tour or an album or a new video on YouTube or whatever it is. The bulk of the kit will be words about what you’re doing. Remember to follow the classic W’s approach:
Who are you? Make this really short. A few sentences. We don’t need a life story, and would prefer not to skip over paragraphs of information… so after I read three or so sentences of “Back in 1998…” and “…so in 2003…” and “Our last album in 2008″ then I’m suddenly at a loss of interest. Here’s an example from the press kit for the new band Marriages:
Marriages is a new band comprised of Red Sparowes members Emma Ruth Rundle (vocals, guitar), Greg Burns (bass, synthesizer) and David Clifford (drums).
And that’s it. No elongated elaborate musing of how the band became to be — that’s interview fodder. A press kit needs to communicate information extremely quickly and efficiently.
What are you promoting? This will no doubt be the bulk of your words. If it’s an album, feel free to go into nitty-gritty details. When did you record it? Where? What inspired it? Any meanings that may go over our heads first time around? What is it like? Any special tracks we should pay attention to? Things like that. If it’s a show, similar guidelines apply. Is it in support of something? Are you opening for someone special? A benefit? An album release party? Hold my hand and walk me through your project with words.
Usable images/artwork
This is very important. Especially to 402, as we are album art fiends here. Please include album artwork, promo pictures, live pictures, tour posters, etc. in your kit. The more stuff the better. All the press kit information I normally receive will include high resolution artwork and usually at least two high resolution images of the artist. All sites are different, some use only artwork and some use as many pictures as possible. Send as many as you got.
The term “usable” should be defined as two things: 1) do I want this to represent who I am/who we are and 2) will this image pixelate if enlarged? Sending high resolution images would solve the latter of the two problems, as most websites don’t post images over 1.0MB for a review (or a size larger than 1000×1000 normally). The first one is more subjective — be smart about it and be creative. An image of a band up against a brick wall is fairly lame, albeit general and informative. A photoshoot of all of your members doing something themed — maybe around the theme of your album — is something more interesting. Straylight Run had a pretty fun set of promotion photos when they were releasing their album The Needles, The Space. Sort of a throwback showtime-y vibe… dare I say steampunk?
Don’t overflow the kit with image gibberish. I received a kit once where it was a PDF of a handful of pages and the background on all of the pages were random images of all the members in the band at some party. Needless to say, I couldn’t really extract these photos out rendering them useless to me. However, it was also really distracting and unnecessary. I appreciate the effort, but the hours it took you to collage each page together could have been spent on emailing more press outlets.
Supporting information
Tour dates, liner notes, production notes, track listings, press clippings, etc all go here. It shouldn’t be the bulk and should only accent what you’ve said in the current bio. Think of all of this stuff as the promotional stuff you may put on a flier or adspace. Can’t use up much space — needs to convey a lot in a tiny amount. Press clippings from press outlets are helpful — as are jibs like “FOR FANS OF _________, _____________, and _________!!!”. Liner notes and production notes are really helpful for us at 402, and for other more in-depth review websites, as we like to dissect albums track-by-track. However, put only what’s necessary. I don’t need a story about how your group Craigslist’d a preamp that didn’t work but sounded cool when you dropped it on the floor. Again, interview stuff… not press review stuff.
This is also a good area to include contact information. This is including ALL contact information: Twitter, Facebook, external links to sites hosting your music, email addresses of everyone who represents you, etc. We can support you best by promoting you through every mean we have. If you don’t tell us about your Facebook page, we’ll never know about it. That is… many (most) of us won’t try to Google you and dig around for information — the people who need to use this as a guide most likely don’t have many supporting documents that are very reliable via search engine.
Other
Other is usually easy: album link/stream, supporting video links, information on interview slots or events you’ll be at, etc. Again, don’t need life stories or explanations — we know what to do when you put links in your kit.
General information and what I don’t like seeing
In the end, what does a press kit look like? That’s up to you — seriously. Some kits I get are all embedded within the email, with links out to their “other” section. Some kits are PDF with the albums linked out to some 3rd party file hosting website. Some kits are entire webpages with everything embedded within it. I’ve seen kits that are compressed into a single file and then when it’s uncompressed it’s just a bunch of one page word document files. I got a handful of physical press kits, where they’ve printed out all of the supporting documents and a physical copy of the album. I had a physical press kit once delivered in a basket with that plastic stringy fluff before.
My personal press kit when I was in a band years ago had a compressed file with three folders inside: Press Kit, MP3s, and Images. Should be pretty straight forward as to what was in each folder…
Not all press kits are expected to have your album free, all willy-nilly. In fact, the majority of the press kits I receive ask for me to reply with a request to access the album at hand. That’s completely fine. A handful of companies I work with have just added me to a “press release promo mailing list” of some sort, where they can monitor who is downloading an album and from where. Another handful of companies just send me albums and ask me to review them — through sites like Mediafire or DropBox. Again, all of these options are completely fine with me and my team here at 402. Just ask yourself What would be the easiest way to get these people my music?
What I hate seeing is: albums attached, track by track in the attachments. I don’t want to download your album track by track. If it’s compressed into a file and attached, I’m okay with that. Just remember to include your press kit. Also, don’t send me fluffer questions about what you should send me. Especially after this. I’ve written a good amount on how to get press and how not to get press on this website. While I try to help everyone out as much as possible, there are easy ways to get on my nerves… being an annoyance and naive/ignorant is definitely one.
Hopefully that helps
This isn’t the most perfect way to present your press kit but it’s generally the way I see (or perceive) most press kits. You may think of a way that is better and that’s fine with me so long as I get all the information out from what you send me. I would assume that most small press units will generally agree with me — if not, please let me know in the comments or via email.
The land of dream pop and shoegaze has been on the up and up for a few years now. M83 last year showed us that dream pop won’t be overlooked, as their album ranked among many best of 2011 lists. And even before M83′s headway, Sigur Ros and Neon Indian have helped turn the genre into something more vast than just some cross-armed kids in a room staring at the floor or visuals on the wall. Rather, the realm of dream pop/shoegaze/ambient pop/chillwave or whatever it’s being called now seems to be diving into all sorts of interesting twists and turns.
Sleep Party People, the single-man band with Brian Batz at the helm, falls under the ever-expanding ambient pop genre without question. We Were Drifting On A Sad Song is SPP’s sophomore release — a follow-up to SPP’s self-titled debut which was released just last year. The extremely new project has steadily developed into a stronghold, as SPP has been nonstop touring in promotion of not just the old album or new album but SPP in general.
People won’t be surprised that the bulk of this album is what you may imagine a band called Sleep Party People may sound like — huge soundscapes with chimes of vocals throughout. Maybe the most fascinating part of the SPP experience I had was the first listen through the album. Honestly, it was… a sleep party. If I were to throw a party in the world inside my head, this may very well be the exact soundtrack that would be playing. I’m just 1) surprised and 2) frightened that no one else has been able to bottle up that sort of feeling in an album for me yet. SPP does just that.
The opening track, “A Dark God Heart”, is a very clear indication of what the album’s core is all about. It’s not just garage or bedroom sounding ambient electronic music that a handful of bands do so well already. It’s a much larger sound. It feels as if it occupies the nooks and crannies of my brain (that’s “sulci” for you smart people). M83′s last album had a similar large sound, but that was usually brought back into perspective with more “small venue” songs. SPP doesn’t have many “small venue” songs. SPP is definitely more of a “big venue” styling.
However, We Were Drifting On A Sad Song includes a good amount more than just synthy-sounding waveforms. The entire album is filled with a good amount of piano and guitars, giving the album a few more stacks upon their building of a musical wall of sound. Some bands that come to mind after hearing this through would be Casiokids and The Radio Dept. Of course, going on tour with a band like Efterklang must of also been a great decision as the eclectic Efterklang fan base can easily see themselves falling for a bigger sounding ambient pop act as Sleep Party People.
The Cons
This album seems to be a tale of two musings — one of the very interesting and new and one of the very standard and saturated. At times, the album’s ability to reach out into more unique realms of the ambient pop and dream pop sphere seem to be limited. The fear for the handful of die hard Sleep Party People followers would be that Sleep Party People may have just released “part two” of the songs laid down last year. And while this may not be an extremely poor decision, it begs the thought of whether or not Batz felt every single song over the past one-ish years were so necessary to be showcased that he needed two albums to do this with. Being such a new act would say that the fans who truly love the music would more than likely be head over heels for this album, as it most likely is not too much a deviation from the first release. A critic may believe the first release was more of a rush job, as Batz may have just wanted something of his out there to promote while going on tour. A critic may also believe that We Were Drifting On A Sad Song is Sleep Party People’s true “first release” and the self-titled debut was more like an elaborate EP of sorts. Normally, I would be a major fan of releasing a great amount of music initially but there are a handful of songs on We Were Drifting which don’t really get to me as some of the other songs do. “Heavy Burden” is something that I would just press “skip” for, as the first four songs before it were such major tone setters. “Heavy Burden” is a step back. It’s more of the same and SPP showed me how new and fresh they could be on this album.
On a small production note, the title track of the album begins with this real cheesy hand clapping in the intro. I sort of cringed in embarrassment listening to that. However, the claps throughout the rest of the song were actually in taste. It was sort of one of those “too much Dave’s Insanity Sauce” moments for me — initially, it seems like a horrible idea but in reflection it wasn’t that bad at all.
The Verdict
The link between this album and Casiokids’ album last year are the strongest for me. However, with that comparison it’s hard to say this album was on the same level in terms of how it made me feel. This album is great — that’s no question. However, could it have been greater? My assumption is that most of this material was either created already or in the process of being created at the time of recording the debut self-titled album. Sleep Party People’s song “I’m Not Human At All” from the last album is one of those strikingly mind-altering tracks that many don’t succeed in writing — especially on their first album. Would it have been possible to see Batz combine the best of both the first and second album to create something EXTREMELY menacing?
It’s not as if there are many “filler” songs on this album. However, the times where I feel uninterested or bored are the times where I know this album is a good album and not a great album. Would love to see this in action live, though. Rabbit masks and all. I have an odd feeling that the draw to Sleep Party People may be the live show and not necessarily the studio act. With that said, I’m eagerly anticipating their San Francisco showing.
Hello, all! This is Nick Wan. As many of you know, this website doesn’t pay the bills. As many of you also know, nor does my current occupation of student researcher. However, the benefits of being a research assistant are fairly awesome — such as being able to attend and present at international neuroscience conferences. And that is exactly what I’ve been doing for the last few days (and next few days).
Tanya has been my lab partner for two years now. We’ve worked on this project, music processing differences between dancers and non-dancers, ever since we got into this lab (ran by our primary investigator, Dr. Nakano). As expected, I’ve probably spent more hours shoulder-to-shoulder with Tanya while hacking away on a computer than maybe anyone else in my life.
As many of you probably don’t know (or particular care about), Cognitive Neuroscience Society Meeting is one of the bigger neuroscience-specific conferences in the world. It’s sort of like the science equivalent of Noise Pop, CMJ, or SXSW — it’s multiple days, bringing together a bunch of the newest neuroscience research available (some from big name schools, many [most] from small name schools). It’s similar priced to some of these touted festivals (around $120 for registered students, around $400 for unregistered “at-the-door” tickets). And the big thing: networking. You’re trying to talk with as many like-minded people as possible. Hopefully they will help you out with your project designs and potentially you spark some interest in some researchers who are ending a current study and hoping to start a new one. This is all wrapped together with keynote speakers, slide presentations, and award ceremonies.
The venue of the CNS Meeting changes yearly, switching between a handful of US cities (if I’m not mistaken, San Francisco, Chicago, and New York). This year is in Chicago. We were in the first presentation group. Each presentation group crams into a massive room, where over 100 presenters are presenting their posters at the same time. Generally, you will be talking to anywhere from 40 – 200 people about your project. Then, you will be fielding maybe 10 – 40 extremely difficult questions about your research. It’d be like playing a demo for the foremost A&R and producers and having them tear you up, constructively. In a sense, it’s not as hardcore as being torn up by a producer (or multiple producers at the same time) because the science community is about advancing good research, as opposed to bashing a project because of tiny blemishes here or there. In fact, many of the projects being presented are still in the process of being analyzed — almost none of the projects are near completion, and a handful are preliminary results.
Our presentation went a little into overtime, so to say. We were talking nonstop and at the very end, literally maybe 10 minutes before the hall closed for the night, we had two interested CNS members ask us about our findings. These discussions can vary between the short and the engaged (aka the long). This case was the long. Which was fine, because if you know me then you know about how I love talking. Because of this, we took our poster down last. They had to turn the lights on and off, sort of like signalling last call.
My friend Adrienne, a native Chicagoan, recommended us to check out The Neo-Futurists’ Theater and their showing of Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind. The cab driver stated, “That’s… a local’s place. How do you know about it? There’s a line around the corner for it every weekend. It’s in the church.” And so it was — next to a funeral chapel. The line did wrap around the corner and the show was sold out (as it normally does). It was maybe one of the best theater performances I’ve ever seen (I don’t see much theater, but this will be hard to top going forward). Going to Chicago and missing out on that is not a wise thing to do.
Tonight was an easy night — we ate Gino’s deep dish and watched Game of Thrones. We went to a handful of talks and poster presentations today. Tomorrow it a lot of music related talks, so I’ll obviously be there. More pictures and notes from the field soon.
