Check us out on iTunes, yo. (Opens in a new window, and then opens iTunes.)

In this: News, Fang Island interview, Red Sparowes, Local Natives, This is Our Fight, and jj

Errors: I think I mistake This is Our Fight's song "Easy AM" for the song "Across the Sky".

Music by:

Alvin Pingol

Angels and Airwaves

Ceremony

Minus the Bear

The Fall of Troy

The Pixies

Fang Island

Red Sparowes

Local Natives

This is Our Fight

jj

The xx

In this: Xiu Xiu, Fang Island, Joanna Newsom, Husky Rescue, and Best Coast reviews. Maxi helps out with the outro music as well.

Errors: A few plural errors here and there. I said the cover of "Peach, Plum, Pear" was a cover by John Nolan. Although correct, it was actually by Straylight Run (probably just John and Michelle). A few other errors as well, but I really don't recall them unfortunately.

Notes: Sorry if this one is a little drawn out... still trying to figure out this podcast thing. Any ideas as to what I should do is definitely welcomed. Also, feel free to check us out on iTunes for the same podcast, and all other 402 podcasts as well, if that's more convenient for you.

Music:

Flirtphonic - New Car Smell [note: help out Flirtphonic by showing him some comment love at DJ Shadow's site!]

Husky Rescue - Sound of Love

Xiu Xiu - Dear God, I Hate Myself

Fang Island - Careful Crossers; Daisy

Joanna Newsom - Baby Birch; Occident; Soft As Chalk; Bridge and Balloons

Straylight Run - Peach, Plum, Pear [note: I couldn't find John Nolan or Straylight Run doing this... so here's Owen Pallett, who I mentioned in this podcast]

In this: Special guest Dan Jordan helps me with my dreams, Rob Zombie, Motion City Soundtrack, Efterklang, and some Martini Ranch on the side.

Errors: I call the song "Mars Needs Women" something different. Oops.

Music by:

Martini Ranch - Reach

Rob Zombie - Werewolf Women of the SS; Mars Needs Women

Motion City Soundtrack - Her Words Destroyed My Planet; Disappear

Efterklang - I Was Playing Drums

Jeroen Tel - Alternative Fuel

Nick Wan Nation - I F* Hate You part I

Lion King + Large Hadron Collider = ???

In this episode: Girl troubles, Dashboard Confessional + New Found Glory, Bettie Serveert, The Magic Theatre, Shane Kalantari guest call, next week's three albums chosen by Shane.

Errors: I forgot what band did the album The '59 Sound. It's The Gaslight Anthem. Also, I kept calling "Efterklangs" by the name "Efterklang", with no "s". "S"orry bros. Another error, this one is just in my life, I usually don't say bro as much as I did this time around. So... sorry for that?

Music featured:

Erik Schau - Most of All

New Found Glory - Swiss Army Romance

Dashboard Confessional - Better Off Dead

Bettie Serveert - Deny All

DESA - Delilah

The Gaslight Anthem - The '59 Sound

Titus Andronicus - No Future Part Three: Escape From The Future

fun. - Be Calm

Say Anything - Less Cute

Forgive Durden - Genesis

The Magic Theatre - Steamroller

You, Me & Iowa - Margaret Mourning

In this: Michelina's vs Nick Wan follow up, confusion on when to post reviews, Spoon, Los Campesinos!, Deer Tick.

Errors: So, I guess I don't know how to read either since I kept saying "Los Campensinos!" rather than "Los Campesinos!" (with no N). Sorry for offended you LC! fans. And people who can read.

Music featured:

Skies on Fire - Tail Lights at a Distance

Spoon - The Mystery Zone; Is Love Forever?

Los Campesinos! - Romance is Boring; We've Got Your Back

Deer Tick - Dance of Love; Axe is Forever

At the Drive-In - For now... We Toast

Listen to the 'cast to understand the pic.

In this: Me complaining, Owen Pallett, The American Dollar, some Flirtphonic. Also, I threw a shout out to my homie Gigi. No need to review Michelina's Rigatoni & Sauce with Broccoli and White Chicken, I got you covered.

Some errors: I say I'm "restarting" Flirtphonic's song at the end... but I never started it to begin with?

Music Featured:

DJ Giant Octopus - Bare Knuckle Boxing

The American Dollar - Second Sight

Owen Pallent - Lewis Takes Off His Shirt

Russian Circles - Philos

Flirtphonic - MY ROOM NOW

Don't mind Pocahontas.

Hit play and enjoy. Or. Download, hit play, then enjoy. Feedback always appreciated.

[powerpress]http://www.402productions.com/podcasts/NWReviews-01-January12th.mp3[/powerpress]

Is the intro too much? Too big? If you got ORIGINAL music, preferably that you personally own the content rights to, and want to let me use it for the show then shoot me an email at nick at 402 productions dot com.

Articles mentioned:

Baggy Time - Your Private Part Touched My Heart

Matthew Price - Stranded

You Me at Six - Hold Me Down

Some errors: I think I call You Me at Six's song "Liquid Confidence" incorrectly "Liquid Courage". Although it would take much liquid courage for me to be confident in saying You Me at Six's newest album is a good album. And that would be false confidence.

In this episode: Me complaining about Bat for Lashes, review for Baggy Time, review for Matthew Price, review for You Me at Six, some similes for bad music, and some more Baggy Time.

Music featured:

Flirtphonic and DJ Giant Octopus - Untitled

Glee Cast - Don't Stop Believin'

You Me at Six - Liquid Confidence

Cartel - Say Anything (Else)

The Polyphonic Spree - Hold Me Now

Baggy Time - Effect Me

Merry Christmas 402 Productions!!

For those who just tuned in, check out the first podcast in the streaming thing above! It's not very exciting, but just wishing everyone a merry Christmas today and a post-happy Hanukkah. "Post-happy Hanukkah" kind of sounds like a genre of music I wouldn't like. Or it could be interpreted as "after being happy" as in you aren't happy after Hanukkah. In any case, enjoy your celebratory days, whether they happened or haven't yet.

More podcasts on the way, as the stream suggests. We got some of our yearly lists and one from me for the decade. And if you haven't added my buddy Gigi from Gigi's Reviews to your RSS feed yet, do yourself a merry Christmas and do so!

-nw

It really feels like I'm witnessing a total solar eclipse when I find myself listening to a song over and over again for days on end.  It's a different feeling from when I'm editing film to music, or, for example, when Lil' Wayne's "A Milli" first came out, where I listen and listen and listen and then suddenly, poof, the magic is gone and I never want to hear the song again.  I can't think of anything more rare than a total solar eclipse to analogize with what I am currently experiencing.

I can't exactly recall how I stumbled upon volcano! and their newest release, "So Many Lemons", and I would rather not say anything more until it is heard:
volcano! - "So Many Lemons"
"So Many Lemons" music video

volcano!, or the collective minds of Chicagoans Aaron With (vocals/guitas), Mark Cartwright (electronics), and Sam Scranton (drums/percussion), has a relatively decent history in the noise rock genre having released their first album, Beautiful Seizures, back in 2005 on The Leaf Label as well as opening for Deerhoof, The National, and current indie-blog favorites, The Dirty Projectors along the way.  Seizures is a little TOO sporadic and noise-rocky for my tastes, but there are definitely some gems ("La Lluvia" into "Red And White Bells", for two).  Seizures apparently garnered enough acclaim to interest Vincent Moon over at La Blogotheque to record two Take-Away Show tracks.  The first video sounds more like the drunken assholes who used to co-captain the off-shoot a cappella/improv combo-choir at the local junior college, not the fittingly epileptic operatics found on Seizures, but their sound really clears up and takes shape into something much more than noise in their sophomore album, Paperwork, released in 2008.

Paperwork, even to this day (about two months after the first of many, many back-to-back-to-back listens), continues to surprise me.  Every song has its' noise-rocky tics, its' classic rock hooks and great segues in between.  Take "Performance Evaluation Shuffle", the first track off of Paperwork: the song starts off in this poppy, jump-aroundy, head-noddy kind-of swing with With's vocals bouncing around atop his guitar strums and Scranton's almost marching-band beat.  The song breaks off perfectly and begins to build, xylophone/marimba/similar instrument and all.  With suddenly shifts to fluent spanish vocals as he croons to the apex of the build-up, followed by the breakdown which slams us through to the end of the track.  It's an insane three-and-a-half minutes of pop, hardcore, punk, jazz, rock, insert genre here, and so on, but it's not crazy for crazy's sake like most of the noise-rock/indie/Animal Collective's out there today.  It's calculated chaos and it works.  It's like an anarchist commune - it doesn't make sense, but it does.  Check it out:
volcano! - "Performance Evaluation Shuffle"

"PES" is just a taste.  Every track on Paperwork has something to offer.  My personal favorites are "Tension Loop", a beautiful jazz-electro ballad that fades into a Johnny Greenwood-esque guitar outro (accompanied by a bicycle bell, of course) and "Astronomer's Ballad", one of those classic spanish-spaghetti-space-western-psychosis-love songs. Need I say more?

I never thought mixing Battles, Talking Heads, Deerhoof, and whatever the drug of choice is out in the midwest would produce anything worth a darn let alone listenable, but I can't wait for whatever is to come next of volcano!!  Check them out TODAY. RIGHT NOW. GO.

Schau has about eight or nine songs he'd like to record in the next few weeks. Tambo is somewhat busy with his own endeavours, but will most likely be in the fray of this album sooner or later. But until that day comes, Schau and I recorded a song called Back Home over two days. The original demo, which will hopefully see the light of day, had this Hawaiian/tropical vibe to it that everyone but myself pointed out. I saw this song as more of a way to introduce something Schau hasn't really been backed by: a band. We've done a bunch of not-so-traditional drums on all of his recordings in Shedaluma, which usually turned out great, but never have we crossed into the realm of just some four-piece kit with some cymbals and only one guy behind the set. Of course, we couldn't necessarily do that either so we went with some machine drums instead... but it's a start.

Another aspect of the song we recorded is the slowly developing idea of whether or not Schau wants to stay on the side of what the song means and how it feels altogether... or if he wants to bounce to the side he's very familiar with musically, just having some good fun with a mic, a recording machine, and no one to tell you not to. Except me of course. The line is very fine at the moment, but maybe when we lay a few more tracks down we can gather up what the album should actually sound like... a party? or something more serious?

Since the song was recorded at The Shed (and parts in my own room) it's hard to say how different the quality would be if we also recorded some tracks down in Shedaluma. The quality of mics and space shoot through the roof in Shedaluma, whereas here at The Shed we've got very very very limited space and equipment to work with. Engineering a tasty hit out of this place is kind of like trying to build a skyscraper with toothpicks -- it's possible....... but it's a very very long way before it will actually happen.

If you've ever followed my production blog [nwlikesmusic.blogspot.com] then you probably know about the only mic that is owned by The Shed. It's an Audio-Technica PRO24, which is a really cheap condenser mic. There are a few Sony mics in The Shed but no phantom power to use them, unless we run it through the Korg D4... but then it'd be way too much of a hassle and recording wouldn't be as fast as it would be annoying. So we're stuck with some shitty mic here but we're making it happen.

Another thing that we're doing is using the old school Fender Bassman with... dun dun dun! An actual BASS guitar!! We've also used it with my electric guitar as well. Luckily for this song, it's kind of got that beach vibe so the Fender tone isn't too much... which it could be at times.

We did vocals in both my bedroom, which gives a better acoustic sound and doesn't sound as cramped of a space either, as well as The Shed. The difference in the ceilings really helped out for differentiation in the double tracked vocals. We also recorded all of the acoustics in my room since hardwood gives off better vibes than carpet does. Electrics were all done in The Shed.

During the mixdown, Felisha Gonzalez helped me out with the ending of the song... whether it should be more Weezer or more Mason Jennings. Turns out, the mix of the two was her decision: the vocals from the first mix and the solo from the second mix. She also would like to add that she "perfected it". Also, Schau asked her prior to the mixing that he "demands perfection". Great job editing team, you've appeased each other. As for the song itself... it's in the link below! Check it out!

Erik Schau - Back Home

right click and "save target as..." to save to your compy. or just click it to stream!