Despite the best laid plans to have a week’s worth of posts ready to go, time got away from me so you’ll have to wait a week for your indie fix. In the meantime, hopefully the archives will tide you over (have you heard this live Flin Flon track from the archive? I was listening to the show this evening and it’s so great). Don’t worry about me, I’ll be busy hanging with Drew Brees, Brett Favre and Quintron.
Though I came late to the game when it comes to my appreciation of Vic Godard, I’ve had a great time tracking down a lot of his back catalog. With a musical style varying wildly from release to release, I’ve always found myself attracted to Vic’s jazz standards-esque songs from the early 80′s. In his latest endeavor, Vic teams up with author Irvine Welsh to release this EP from their 2003 musical of the same name. I am first and foremost not a “musicals” fan, but I’m really enjoying this track. Vic also has a new LP coming out October 11th, so be on the lookout for that as well.
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Download: Vic Godard – Blackpool
Yesterday was the legendary decision declaring California’s Prop 8 ban on gay marriage unconstitutional. People here in Los Angeles are celebrating it in different ways. Some are going to parades, some are eating vegetables longer than 2″. I decided to celebrate by doing the most gay thing I could think of, listen to the entire Aluminum Group discography. While going through all the their songs I had (and supplementing them with a few on the Hype Machine), I had forgotten that they were on the “Reproductions: Songs of The Human League” compilation. Check out this fantastic cover of one of my favorite Human League songs and if you’re still in the mood for more Aluminum Group covers, look back in the archive for their take on Sweet Child O’ Mine.
Download: Aluminum Group – Love Action (I Believe In Love) (Human League Cover)
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I have a soft spot for anything that’s ’60s pop or soul and sung by a female. This amazing track by Alex Winston sounds like it could have come out on any of the many Motown-influenced labels back in the day. She captures the exact flavor of ’60s soul but with an updated sound. I would best describe her on this track as the female counterpart to Raphael Saadiq, definitely someone to watch.
A very limited run of 250 7″s for this single is being released next week, but you can pre-order them now.
Download: Alex Winston – Choice Notes
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Along with the brand new layout and features of our site and our brand new Twitter feed, The Sound Of Indie is bringing it to you even more high-tech with our brand new Facebook page. Feel free to “Like” us here. And who knows? Maybe your mug will end up in the fancy Facebook widget on the left-hand side of our page. But what we do know is that if you do “Like” us, you will have a badge of honor telling the world that you, in fact, have impeccable taste in music.
Here in Los Angeles it’s finally hit 80+ degrees two days in a row, so I declare summer has finally started. And with the start of summer, I gotta find my summer jam. Fortunately this track from Keepaway fits the bill perfectly. This song “Yellow Wings” with it’s indie meets 90′s era-4AD feel is by far the stand-out of their Baby Style EP which was released earlier this year. I would describe the other tracks on the EP as if Modest Mouse traded in their guitars for synths. A bit discordant at times, but it still works. All in all, a stellar debut from this Brooklyn trio. You can pick up the vinyl at the Lefse Records site here, or the inferior quality digital tracks at iTunes.
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Download: Keepaway – Yellow Wings
We are excited to announce that the “Bands Featured on TSOI” module on the sidebar is now completely populated with all the posts from the archive. You can now easily browse TSOI by band as well as by month/year!
Along with the brand new site, The Sound Of Indie is pleased to announce a brand new addition to our unpaid staff, Brooklyn operative Mark. A relative newbie to show recording, Mark attends several shows a month in NYC and has been known to make occasional forays to New Jersey venues. While specializing in electronic and synth-based bands, Mark’s musical tastes cover a wide swath of genres. You may have already noticed Mark’s a-ha show review and tracks last Friday, which is the first of many posts to come. Please put your hands together and give a warm welcome to the newest member of the TSOI staff, Mark.
After nearly 5 years, The Sound Of Indie is finally getting a face lift. Taking advantage of some of the new WordPress 3.0 features, we’ve completely redesigned the site to make it easier to use, easier to comment, and a bit more interesting. Here are a couple of the new features:
We now are using the Sociable plug-in, so if you like a post you can easily share it on Face-Tweet-Book-Whatever-Space.
You can also now easily see and subscribe to all the latest comments on our posts.
We also now have a “Bands Featured On TSOI” dropdown list so it’s easy to find all posts related to a specific band (particularity useful for those fans of bands like Jonathan Fire*Eater, Unwound and Blonde Redhead who have had many, many posts over the years). We are in the process of going through the archive and updating all the tags, so more and more bands will be showing up in the next couple of days.
We hope you find the new design more useful and pleasing to the eye and let us know what you think about TSOI 2: Electric Boogaloo.
Superpowers Cassette
Troubleman Unlimited 0.5
1992
We were off last week, but we’re back and with what is probably the most requested thing out of my entire music collection. I’ve put it off for a while since it meant tracking down the original zine, scanning it in, encoding the cassette, etc., etc., but here it is in it’s entirety, both the cassette and book. As you can see by the track listing, it could very well be one of the best punk rock compilations to have ever been produced. This comes from one of the first 300 hand-dubbed cassettes. Another 700 were psudo-professionally made for a total of 1,000. A lot of these tracks can only be found here (including stuff that never made it on official “complete discographies” of some of the individual bands). The quality of the recordings vary greatly, but most of the tracks are stellar. Also included in the zine are interviews with record label Simple Machines, Rorschach, Shudder To Think, Sticks and Stones, as well as a Merel tour diary.
Setlist:
Disc 1:
1. Unknown Artist – 123 And
2. Three Shades Of Dirty – For The Mean While
3. Sticks And Stones – Theme Song For Nothing
4. Iconoclast – Blind
5. Husaipungo – Unity
6. Husaipungo – Union
7. One Blood – Settlers Nations
8. Sleeper – 10 Miles
9. Born Against – Shanks/X-Mas Eve
10. Matter Of Fact (Policy Of Three) – Declination
11. Avail – Stride
12. Avail – All About It
13. Greyhouse – Evernearing Joy
14. Herion – Has Been
15. Heroin – Head Cold
16. Struggle – Pigs On Fire
17. Assuck – Within-Without
18. Unknown Artist – Hey Suck My Balls
19. Unknown Artist
20. Unknown Artist – Twilight
Disc 2:
1. Yoda – 900 Years Old
2. 1.6 Band – One Eye Open
3. Crashwagon – Instant Deity
4. Moss Icon – Sioux Day
5. Freak Beans – Unknown Track
6. Rorschach – Cut The Wheel (Live)
7. Rorschach – Shanks (Live)
8. Hoonah – Bert
9. Crisis Of Faith – Doctor Of Death
10. Chisel – Sloth
11. Merel – Daydreamer
12. Merel – Wrong Again
13. Spork – Look
14. Spork – Nice
15. Tsunami – Flameproof Suit
16. Shudder To Think – About These Dreams
17. Shudder To Think – Rain Covered Cat
18. Shudder To Think – Day Ditty
19. Unknown Artist – 3 Dudes
Download: Superpowers Cassette – 547 MB
Download: Superpowers Booklet/Wanna Communicate #3 – 43 MB
