Moon Duo previews new Stars Are The Light album with "Lost Heads"

Moon Duo's forthcoming album Stars Are The Light is due September 27th. Check out "Lost Heads" below. 

Wooden Shjips @ The Horseshoe, tonight

Check out the video for "Already Gone" off the new Wooden Shjips album V out now on Thrill Jockey. 

See Moon Duo w/ Crosss @ Silver Dollar tonight

This recent KEXP performance should give you an idea of what to expect from Sanae & Ripley. 

Wooden Shjips @ The Horseshoe, Sunday

San Francisco's Wooden Shjips may soon be taking a detour into Zamrock.

Andy Weatherall & Sonic Boom remix Wooden Shjips

Remixes is a 28 minute Wooden Shjips 12” EP featuring exclusive retouches from the celebrated Andy Weatherall and Sonic Boom (aka Pete Kember of Spacemen 3) along with a hands-across-the-water collabo involving Kandodo (which is really Simon Price of The Heads). The limited-edition release pressed on clear vinyl with fancy black streaks is available now directly from Thrill Jockey or wherever dubby psych remixes are sold.

Andrew Weatherall, long time producer and remixer – who has worked with Primal Scream, New Order, My Bloody Valentine, and Bjork among others – remixed "Crossing" while Sonic Boom of Spacemen 3 fame contributed "Wiking Stew (aka Red Krayola-ing)". When Pete was called in to help master the Wooden Shjips' West, he was so inspired that he made a mash-up on his own. The final track is the Wooden Shjips' sad farewell to the North American polar bear "Ursus Maritimus (Last Bear's Lament)", a long distance collaboration with  Simon Price. Shjips guitarist Ripley Johnson (who also plays in Moon Duo with Sanae Yamada) created the bed of the track in Colorado in between tours and sent if off to Simon, in London where he added all the additional instrumentation at his home studio.

Check out Wooden Shjips @ The Horseshoe tonight

  
Motobike by Wooden Shjips Live at KXLU



Fallin'



Black Smoke Rise

Moon Duo take off

Performing and recording with San Francisco psych monsters Wooden Shjips isn't enough noise-making activity to keep Erik "Ripley" Johnson and Sanae Yamada busy. So last year the guitarist and keyboardist took their fascination with Suicide, Silver Apples and the Ruins to the next level by forming Moon Duo in a bid to prove that two determined musicians with the right effects and amplification can shake the walls as well as any band.

Their entrancing new four-song Escape (Woodsist) album builds on the krautrockish repetitive rumble attack of Moon Duo's two prior limited-run EPs, Love on the Sea (Sick Thirst) and Killing Time (Sacred Bones) by taking a more song-oriented approach to compositions while remaining true to the pounding groove.
The fact that Moon Duo have hit their stride with a recording called "Escape" shouldn't be cause for concern that they plan to jump Shjip. Apart from a brief Moon Duo tour which will bring them to SXSW to play the Woodsist showcase at Red 7 in Austin March 20, Johnson and Yamada are working on a new Wooden Shjips recording which will follow the release of another collection of the Shjips' rare singles tracks –cleverly titled "Vol. 2" – set for release March 22 on Sick Thirst.
Along with songs originally issued by Sub Pop, Mexican Summer and Yeti Magazine, the seven song compilation includes a scorching live recording of Death's Not Your Friend from their split tour 7" with The Heads in addition to a boisterous rip through the Bridget Bardot and Serge Gainsbourg classic Contact and a timely rendition of Neil Young's Vampire Blues. Unfortunately for everyone but eBay dealers, the Shjips' crack at Spaceman 3's I Believe It from their Great Pop Supplement split single didn't fit on the 44 minute LP.

Wooden Shjips Vol. 2 
1 Loose Lips
2 Start To Dreaming
3 Vampire Blues
4 Death's Not Your Friend [Live]
5 Contact
6 I Hear the Vibrations [E-Z Version]
7 Outta My Head

 
Bopper's Hat Jam by Moon Duo




Death's Not Your Friend by Wooden Shjips live @ Beerland - March 16, 2007



LINKS
Moon Duo http://www.myspace.com/moonduo
Wooden Shjips http://www.myspace.com/woodenshjips

Fave Fifty Of 2009

The beautifully crafted To Be Still album by Portland singer/songwriter Alela Diane topped my list of 2009's superb spins. 

Putting together a list of my top recordings wasn't something I was planning to do. But when a number of people asked whether they could expect any best-ofs from me, I started thinking about all the amazing stuff that came out this year. Here are the first 50 that came to mind...

1. Alela Diane - To Be Still (Rough Trade)
2. Blakroc - Blakroc (Blakroc Project)
3. Dengue Fever - Sleepwalking Through The Mekong (M80)
4. Eleni Mandell - Artificial Fire (Zedtone)
5. Wooden Shjips - Dos (Holy Mountain)
6. Tandy Love & Mad Smooth - Anagram Jam (Finders Keepers)
7. Jenny Wilson - Hardships! (Gold Medal)
8. Oumou Sangare - Seya (World Circuit)
9. Masada Quintet featuring Joe Lovano - Stolas - Book Of Angels Vol. 12 (Tzadik)
10. Indigo Jam Unit - Collectivity (Basis)
11. El Michels Affair - Enter The 37th Chamber (Fat Beats)
12. Henry Threadgill Zooid - This Brings Us To, Vol. 1 (Pi)
13. DOOM - Born Like This (Lex)
14. Giallos Flame - Euro Slash EP (2600)
15. Mos Def - The Ecstatic (Downtown)
16. People Under The Stairs - Carried Away (Om)
17. Nostalgia 77 - Sessions featuring Keith & Julie Tippett (Tru Thoughts)
18. Yeti #8 mix (yetipublishing.com)
19. KRS-One and Buckshot - Survival Skills (Duck Down)
20. Budos Band - The Budos Band EP (Daptone)
21. sun O))) - Monoliths & Dimensions (Southern Lord)
22. James Blackshaw - The Glass Bead Game (Young God)
23. The Flatlanders - Hills and Valleys (New West)
24. Handsome Family - Honey Moon (Carrot Top)
25. Diana Panton Trio + 1 - Pink (www.dianapanton.com)
26. Dexateens - Singlewide (Skybucket)
27. The Strange Boys - And Girls Club (In The Red)
28. Fever Ray - Fever Ray (Rabid)
29. Dam Funk - Toeachizown (Stones Throw)
30. Timo Lassy - Round Two (Ricky Tick)
31. Buika with Chucho Valdes - El Ultimo Trago (Warner)
32. John Doe & The Sadies - Country Club (Yep Roc)
33. Lisa O Piu - When This Was The Future (Subliminal Sounds)
34. Lee Fields - My World (Truth & Soul)
35. The Bats - Don't You Rise EP (Slumberland)
36. Lickin' Good Fried - Say Uncle! (Rooster Sandwich)
37. Cate Le Bon - Me Oh My (Irony Bored)
38. Dave Alvin - Dave Alvin & The Guilty Women (Yep Roc)
39. Nat Birchall - Akhenaten (Gondwana)
40. Muskox - Five Pieces (Standard Form)
41. Isla Craig - Isla Craig & The Continental Drift (zunior.com)
42. Buddy & Julie Miller - Written In Chalk (New West)
43. Audie Darling - Full Of Ghosts (One Shoe Rooster)
44. Ty Segall - Lemons (Goner)
45. Catherine MacLellan - Water In The Ground (True North)
46. Ian Blurton - Happy Endings (Sir Ian Blurton)
47. Brown Bird - The Devil Dancing (Peapod)
48. Sharon Van Etten - Because I Was In Love (Language Of Stone)
49. Gareth Dickson - Collected Recordings (Drifting Falling)
50. Wizard Smoke - Live Rock In Hell (Wizard Smoke)

Spacemen 3 Vs. Wooden Shjips

It takes a special breed of record nut to operate a vinyl-only label at a time when the format is supposed to be obsolete. Rarer still is the sort with exceptionally good taste like Dominic Martin (of Earworm Records notoriety) whose UK-based Great Pop Supplement label has snuck out an impressive series of high quality artifacts presenting superb music by uniquely talented fringe artists in aesthetically dazzling packages – we're talking multi-fold handmade sleeves, embroidered bags, photo mounted envelopes, nut-bolted balsa wood, stickers, packets of seeds, the works.
So when you buy a GPS record, you don't just get to hear a couple of great songs by a Swedish one-man-band or a Japanese psych unit, you've also got a snazzy conversation piece to impress that friend who thinks they've got everything MV + EE and Jack Rose have ever done.

To mark the label's 50th release milestone, Dom has just issued a red wax split pairing an early demo version of Big City by Spacemen 3 with a fabulously fuzzed-up cover of the Playing With Fire album corker I Believe It courtesy of San Francisco's Wooden Shjips, perhaps the only currently active group who could do it justice. As a neat final touch, it comes housed in a sleeve created by Spacemen percussionist Natty Brooker. I'm getting a buzz just looking at it. 
The good news is that instead of the typically miniscule pressings of say 111 or 220 copies which Great Pop Supplement have been known to drop in the past, gps 50 was reportedly issued in an edition of 1000. However, the bad news is that according to Dom, the entire run "literally vanished in an afternoon." But whatever the conventional vinyl vendors didn't stockpile for mailorder purposes was very likely hoovered up speculators hoping to quintuple their investment on eBay. So don't fret, you'll be seeing the single turning up online for months if not years to come.

   

Links
http://www.greatpopsupplement.com/

Wooden Shjips spook Brooklyn hipsters

While you were out trick-or-treating Halloween night, San Francisco's pysch overlords Wooden Shjips were engaged in a densely droning freakfest with the Vivian Girls, Crystal Stilts and Religious Knives at 171 Lombardy in Brooklyn's Greenpoint neighborhood.
Fortunately the tech-savvy folks at NYC Taper were on hand with an Edirol R-44 four-track recorder and a pair of Neumann KM-150 microphones to properly document the Shjips' fuzzed-out onslaught which appropriately culminates with a searing swing through Neil Young's Vampire Blues.
Download an MP3 or FLAC version of the Wooden Shjips 40-minute set here.