NAME: School of Seven Bells
PROGRESS REPORT: Mixing their second album Disconnect From Desire, out sometime this spring
The first thing you notice when listening to School Of Seven Bells' debut album Alpinisms -- after its startling, free-floating dreaminess -- is how insular the songs are. Lead singer Alejandra Deheza's lyrics grabbed you intellectually before they hit your emotions, and that was the point: her metaphors are impressions of her experience, not yours. And that tightness seems to embrace the band, as if you were listening to music that was, ultimately, impenetrable to outsiders. But despite the title to their next album, it sounds like what the band wants the most is to connect. According to guitarist Ben Curtis, much of that comes from the extensive touring the band (Curtis, Alejandra, and her twin sister Claudia) has done since releasing Alpinisms. "It's a funny situation because you make a record and then you go out on tour, and you play the songs differently. You've gotten to know them more intimately. So you get in touch with that energy and you see people's faces and there's this interaction," he says. For this reason SVIIB wrote Disconnect From Desire almost entirely while on tour, something that lots of Progress Report bands can't do. But it's perfect for what SVIIB wanted to do. Playing tracks from Alpinisms in front of people brought certain aspects to the fore. "We realized something else about our music, which is that there's this heavy quality to it, this powerful quality that we weren't really aware of because we were just writing at home. Going out and playing every night and discovering that, we got really inspired," he explains. Much of the songwriting and recording hoped to recreate the "wild cacophony" and energy they enjoyed playing live.
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Posted at 5:20 PM by Jessica in
Tags: School Of Seven Bells
latest by marna b
NAME: Clogs
PROGRESS REPORT: Prepping their album, The Creatures In The Garden Of Lady Walton, for release on March 2nd. Featuring Sufjan Stevens, and My Brightest Diamond's Shara Worden.
Poor Padma Newsome. The Clogs singer/songwriter/instrumentalist had to use simpler vocabulary and visual metaphors just so I could understand how he and fellow Clogs members Bryce Dessner (also of The National), Rachael Elliott and Tom Kozumplik wrote and recorded the band's long-coming album The Creatures In The Garden Of Lady Walton. Well, explaining why it's taken them four years to make another record is easy: Newsome lives in Mallacoota, Australia (population: 1,300) while the others live on the East Coast of the U.S. Harder to explain are the methods and techniques that went into writing many of the songs. Take "We Were Here," which Newsome describes like this: "Think of a guitar as being a sort of geometrical constellation and then I make a copy of it and I flip it upside down and the two constellations are sort of floating forward in time, but they're mirrors of each other. Also the celeste is in that one. It's a mirror but it gets offset by a small amount of time."
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Posted at 5:32 PM by amrit in ,
Tags: Clogs | My Brightest Diamond
latest by Canned Anchoress
NAME: of Montreal
PROGRESS REPORT: Prepping False Priest ("I'm back and forth between The Controller Sphere, and False Priest") the followup to Skeletal Lamping, out sometime in August or September. Engineered by Jon Brion (probably). Featuring cameos from Solange Knowles, Janelle Monae and "one or two other people..."
The anticipated new of Montreal album may or may not be complete. Kevin Barnes says it all depends on how some upcoming sessions with Jon Brion work out. Barnes, who's always worked at home, alone, will meet up with Brion in early spring to work on the 16 songs that will likely make the new record. "If I wasn't going to go out there with Jon then they'd basically be done. They could be done. If I go out there with Jon and we both decide it's not working or whatever, I'll still have an album. And if I go out there and figure this is really great, then I'll have a different album," he says. Either way, the album won't be Skeletal Lamping over again. Barnes says the band is using this break to rethink their live performances, and have made an album that accommodates that. His plans are ambitious: he'd like to get rid of of Montreal's pre-recorded backing tracks, and round out the band line-up to ten or so musicians. "We're going to try to do something closer to the kind of bands that Curtis Mayfield or Stevie Wonder had in the '70s," says Barnes.
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Posted at 3:07 PM by Jessica in ,
Tags: Kevin Barnes | of Montreal
latest by Mr. Quick
NAME:Born Ruffians
PROGRESS REPORT: Mastering their album, Say It, for release early 2010. Recorded at Metalworks Studios in Toronto, and mastered at Rusty Santos' studio in Brooklyn.
Born Ruffians spent this past Thanksgiving week working 12 hours a day. The Canadian band already had a Thanksgiving (October 12), of course, but there other reasons to work through the holiday. For nearly all of 2008, Born Ruffians were on an unplanned hiatus, which seemed to put them and any followup to their 2007 album Red, Yellow & Blue, on hold.
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Posted at 2:49 PM by Jessica in ,
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latest by Brett
NAME: The Apples In stereo
PROGRESS REPORT: Mixing their 7th studio album, Travellers In Space And Time at Trout Recording in Brooklyn. Co-produced by Bryce Goggin.
When I called the studios where The Apples In Stereo frontman Robert Schneider was mixing, I was asked to try back in ten minutes -- Schneider was in the middle of recording another keyboard part for the record. He sounded nervously excited when I called back, like when you've just finished cleaning up before your first party guests arrive. But wasn't the album already done? "There's always ideas and things you can add on up to the last second. Really after the last second," he explained. In fact, Schneider had moved to another room at the studio to set up a mini-studio so he could add in more sounds -- vocoders, "blips and bleeps," keyboards and Mellotrons, while Goggin mixed Travellers In Space And Time in the front. (Yes, that's double-L Travellers.)
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Posted at 6:38 PM by Jessica in , ,
Tags: Robert Schneider | The Apples In Stereo | Thee American Revolution
latest by jas
NAME:Rogue Wave
PROGRESS REPORT: Mixing their latest album, Permalight recorded at Sweet Tea Recording in Oxford, Mississippi. Due March 2, 2010.
As for most people, 2009 was a bad year for Zach Rogue. Of course sadness and introspection was already a huge part of his band Rogue Wave's last album Asleep at Heaven's Gate. "Ironically, [this] has even been a more difficult year. There's been more death than I've ever had in my life," Rogue says. Add to that a freak neck injury from last fall that left Rogue unable to move his shoulder or play guitar for a couple months, and Rogue Wave would have another album full of inward-looking songs about loss and anxiety. Instead, Rogue's temporary paralysis made him appreciate the simple act of moving his body. "When I started playing guitar again because I got feeling back in my hand, I felt like I was a little kid again, because I was actually glad to play the guitar and start writing songs," he says. And he wanted to celebrate. "I've decided that when you experience enough death, that you make a decision: Are you gonna wallow in it or are you gonna make the best of it and enjoy what you have? Because I've seen lately that it goes pretty fast." he explained. "[So] this record is not about self-pity at all. There's some anger in the lyrics and laughing at some of the hypocrisy, some lyrical darkness and stinging non sequitirs and all that, but musically, rhythmically, it's up."
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Posted at 2:52 PM by Jessica in
Tags: Rogue Wave
latest by awesome
NAME: Charlotte Gainsbourg
PROGRESS REPORT:Rehearsing songs from her upcoming album with Beck, titled IRM, out in January. Recorded at The Library, Anonyme, Capitol Studios and Ocean Way in Los Angeles.
Even though her first language is French, actress and singer Charlotte Gainsbourg speaks English with a prim, hesitant British accent, a result of the lessons she took in order to star in a British film. It's a pretty, soothing sound that crosses into her singing voice -- thankfully, since her voice is her sole instrument. Speaking with her, it's obvious that this fact is a source of both joy and anxiety for Gainsbourg. Her second album (as an adult) is a collaboration with Beck, and while she loved having him take control of the project, it's that same lack of control that prevents her from wanting to sing the album live. Currently she's back in Los Angeles, working with Beck and his band to figure out how to play their new songs in front of an audience, or if that's even something she can do. "I really want to be able to do it, but it has to be a pleasure, it can't be a terrifying experience," she says. "I love the songs, and I love singing them, so I just have to find that pleasure again."
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Posted at 10:11 AM by Jessica in ,
Tags: Antichrist | Beck | Charlotte Gainsbourg | Diskjokke | Serge Gainsbourg
latest by Kyle Lemmon
NAME: Caribou
PROGRESS REPORT: Mixing his still-untitled followup to 2007'sAndorra. Recorded at home in London.
"I'm not able to make music based on what people like. It's a very selfish pursuit, in a way," Caribou's Dan Snaith says. And for Snaith, it's also a very obsessive one. Unlike other easily distracted Progress Report subjects, Snaith says it's hard for him to get pulled away from work -- he usually has to be persuaded to leave the house. And he works very slowly. So even though he started working on the album over a year ago, he's put in full days every day since. Right now his Andorra followup is 80% completed, and will probably be out by the spring.
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Posted at 9:56 AM by Jessica in
Tags: Caribou
latest by OrangeKrush
