Pure Bathing Culture casts a luscious glow over the skies of 2012 with an EP that still leaves the heart in a constant state of yearning. Insatiable hearts that have allowed their latest tides of cerulean pop to wash through the shrine that covets our deepest passions, forcing the chains that hold them, releasing light drips of romance into an endless flood of serenity.

“Pendulum” is the product of reminiscence. A smooth dream guided by rich, crystallized vocals and ethereal riffs that ripple through a bed of lucid drum machines. The ambience achieved by the songs crisp sounds and undeniable charm manages to mirror the elegance of Cocteau Twins‘ hazy, reverb tinged pop songs quite well, but without pulling you too far into a nostalgic marathon of your summer love. The delivery is subtle, with seamless soundscapes that refine themselves as a dream-fest builds to monumental heights.

As an opener, it reveals a bit more about their forthcoming debut LP, Moon Tides. The duo have forged a musical mission to uncover the truths of the world. Some songs laced with nostalgia, others with symbolism, compassion, and imperial synths. The truth comes in 9 forms this time around.

The first one lives below:

Moon Tides is out on August 19th via Memphis Industries (UK) & August 20th via Partisan Records (US).

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The Reel World is a PORTALS feature that focuses on tape culture. The ongoing series discusses recent tape releases and prominent cassette labels in an attempt to better understand the growing comeback of analog hiss.

You might not have heard of the hard-working New Jersey tape label Panther People, but they’re keen to change all that. And so are we. Run by the founders of garage punk band Ba Babes, the label specializes in highlighting some of the grungiest rock’n'roll in the tri-state area. With releases from Thee Holy Ghosts, Greg Cee, Roy Orbitron, and others under their belt the label has shown their penchant for curating hard-hitting garage and punk rock. I recently gave label head Mike Walsh the Reel World treatment over Facebook chat, so read on to check it out.

The birth of Panther People seemed to coincide with the Ba Babes coming back from the dead. Was that intended? Did you have a sudden rush of creativity that led to launching both?

Panther People was pretty much born after Ba Babes broke up, because I kind of had nothing else to do. The first release was supposed to be back in 2011 with the Ba Babes full length, but half way through dubbing all of the tapes, we ended up scrapping it. I pretty much sat on the idea of the label for almost two years after that. I ended up putting two other tapes out (the Rockin’ with Greg Cee compilation tape and the Thee Holy Ghosts EP) before the return of Ba Babes and the ‘Back From The Shred‘ cassette came out, but those three releases really got me going after that.

So is Ba Babes still going at it?

Yeah man, we’re working on either another tape or a 7″. Knowing us, it will probably be a tape. We’re feeling wild too, so it will have bass on it and hopefully a sax solo or two.

Sax is coming back in a big way.

I’m all about it. There are so many great bands with saxophone in it and I’m from New Jersey, so I’ve been listening to Clarence blow sax solos all my life.

Back when you guys first started the label you mentioned possibly taking it to the point where you could sponsor some skateboarders. Is that still the plan?

Yeah! That’s still the plan, but it will probably just turn into making t shirts and giving them to all of our friends who skate and calling it a sponsorship. Everyone loves free shirts.

I love free shirts. You can take that as a hint or not.

Consider yourself sponsored.

Ha! Now you guys also talked about circulating a secret handshake among your customers/listeners along the lines of a Germs burn. I realize that it was somewhat of a joke, but did that ever come to fruition?

Haha I totally forgot all about that. I must’ve just been rambling on that day, but that’s a pretty great idea if you ask me. I’m going to get started on that right away.

With all of the artists you work with you seem to have a really good, close relationship. How do you go about selecting what releases to put out?

I’m really just into releasing my friend’s bands and luckily, I have a lot of friends in great bands, so it’s pretty easy for me to find things to put out. The only tape that I’ve done that wasn’t with someone that I knew was Thee Holy Ghosts, but since then we’ve had them up in NJ and became buds with those dudes and even did a second press of their tape, so I definitely think that shit is important. Being buds with who you’re working with makes it a hundred times easier.

Are you looking to keep it sort of in the family? Or are you guys looking to expand Panther People out of your circle?

I have a few more releases lined up to put out that are in the family, but I’m definitely not opposed to expanding out of the tri-state area. There are so many good bands out there and I’m pretty bad with keeping up with any of them, but if someone sends me something that I like, I’ll definitely try and put it out. Especially if it’s got saxophone on it.

Care to tell us a bit about what you have lined up?

Up next is Huge Pupils‘ ‘Dreamcatcher Chord’ EP. They’re a bass (sometimes guitar) / drums duo from North Jersey. Easily one of the loudest bands I’ve ever seen. After that is Brothers of the Head debut “C’mom Now”. It’s pure rock n’ roll. Heavy as all hell. Solos for days and nights from Ewing, NJ. Finally, a Wreaths cassette sometime this summer. They’re a droned out, kind of psych rock n’ roll band from Asbury Park. They’re also way older than I am, but they’ve been the coolest dudes to me over the past two years that I’ve known them.

Alright, well I think that about covers it. Thanks, Mike!

Dude, thank you!

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There is a human phenomenon known as Little Ruckus that has be seen to be believed. Trust me, you have not lived until you’ve witnessed this short, sweaty wonder performing whilst hanging upside down from the rafters of a leather bar. Seriously, if you don’t believe me, hit up our friend Ben Blackburn at Crack In the Road. He has the whole thing on tape.

Real name Dom Rabalais, this one-man electronic dance sensation describes himself as “a sweaty pop dance troupe, made for raising fists of bravery and furious joy against anyone who would ever stop you from fucking every day of your life. We Live The Weird Life. Sweat Power is Our Religion. The Sandwich Eatin Crew (S!E!C!) is our Family.” There is no point in adding anything further to that.

As part of his Four Day Video Orgy, we’ve got the premiere of his video for “If Lightning Strikes Me Down.” The bizarre and somewhat NSFW video is a montage of Little Ruckus doing some weird and disturbing shit in front of his computer’s webcam. Call me crazy, but I’m getting some heavy Tonetta vibes from this thing. He claims that his aim for the video was for it to have a voyeuristic feel to it. Seeing as I feel kind of weird about myself now that I’ve watched it, I can safely say that he succeeded in that.

Not really knowing what to say about the video, I hit Dom up for his thoughts on it. Here’s what he had to say:

It’s kind of a homage to the plethora of fetish and zentai and drag videos that get posted on youtube that I really, really enjoy watching because first of all, I enjoy the way they look, but also because something about the videos feels very open, totally vulnerable, and completely revealing of an extremely deep and possibly extremely private part of one’s self. I have a total respect and admiration for people who have so thoroughly realized something that they are so passionate about and that makes them feel alive.

Little Ruckus‘ new album American Confetti (which he recently premiered on YouTube while running on a treadmill) will be out on May 30. Or if you happen to catch him opening for Andew W.K. tonight at Vaudeville Muse in Des Moines, Iowa you can grab it there. Party hard.

The post Little Ruckus – “If Lightning Strikes Me Down” (Official Video) appeared first on PORTALS.

Yung Life has just released a brilliant summer tune, “Solarbeats,” boasting not only a summery character but also a striking timeliness.

Through a tolling piano riff and heavy tribal drums, we hear the voice of lead vocalist Gabriel White and chorus chanting. “I’m twenty-three, I live at my mother’s place, I live at my father’s place!” It’s such a simple sentiment, but entirely relatable and timely. Our early twenties are often marked by uncertainty, as we find ourselves in the limbo between stages of adulthood. Instead of lily padding from one self-pitying thought to the next, this song states a simple fact with a wonderfully upbeat melody. It seems to embrace the ambiguity of a life unsorted. With so much out of one’s control, perhaps it’s healthiest to elegantly ride the waves of doubt and dance along the way.

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In this edition of Visualized, we talk to LA-based visual artist and musician Lionel Williams  about interactive art, audience participation, Egyptian BioGeometry, and his dream installation. His band, Vinyl Williams, released their stunning debut Lemniscate in fall 2012, and it is not to be missed. You can grab it in Europe via No Pain In Pop and stateside via Williams’s own label, Salonislam.

You have an upcoming tour with Mount Kimbie and Holy Other. Tell us about the interactive flyer you created for the tour.

Mmmhmmmmm. I’ve been designing flyers for so long… flat vertical flyers. I only recently began thinking that it’s a strange space to be working inside of, somewhat of a limited, non-generative zone. Throughout my experimenting and exploring in 3D modeling and interactive programs, lately I’ve inevitably had a shift into 3D space. Therefore I thought it’d be interesting to apply these world-making tools to something as banal as a tour flyer, hopefully to shift the weight of a flyer’s inherent lifeless qualities into a more expanded, highly generative area, meaning the user can create the flyer by moving, can adjust the composition of the objects in space based on their movement. They can then encounter the information about the tour instead of the information encountering them.

The main idea is more about the real-time improvisational aspects of the sound within the world. Three songs are playing simultaneously, one from each artist on tour. I deliberately picked songs that are in the same key, or close enough to mix well with each other. The three tracks are placed at different areas within the environment, and the user’s proximity to those areas determine the remixed sound of the three separate simultaneous tracks. There is also an additional secret improvisational remix area located at the very end of the world, incorporating short audio samples that we (Vinyl Williams) have compiled of different jams we’ve done. The never-ending process and re-appropriation is everything. Our improvisations become new improvisations generated by the audience, by fans. The separation between audience and performer is getting exponentially thinner!

Tell us about the incorporation of your interactive pieces into your upcoming live shows in Denver and New York City. What will that look like?

You’ll float into a gallery with white walls, noticing the checkerboard floor (where the American kitchen transcends into the Twin Peaks Freemason ritual chamber) and a large Egyptian (American?) obelisk, which is on top of a wireless computer mouse, which rolls on the floor. The placement of the obelisk in the room determines the direction of exploration throughout the digital world we’ve created, which will be projected on one of the white walls. It will act as a visual generating tool, an irrational planet of waves, temples, and multi-religious, contradictory, and contextless imagery. We’ll be exhibiting at Forest Room 5 in Denver on May 24th, as well as Glasslands in New York City on the 29th.

How do you adapt the installation to different spaces?

The most important decision we will be making is the placement of the projector, which will either be on the band while we’re performing, or on a separate wall depending on the architecture and layout. We generally don’t put too much preliminary thought into these things. We wing it a lot.

What is the role of audience participation in your pieces?

A goal of ours, not quite achieved yet, is to give the audience a stake in how our musical improvisations twist and turn, and how our stage effects and visuals happen and change in time. A couple of days ago we did a show at The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles where we had a computer system set up to a projector, where audience members can explore an environment I created called “Postmodern Magic” while we perform—which is named after the book by Patrick Dunn. The ideas in the book and the ideas in the virtual realm are not very related. The world is sort of a satirical kiss on the cheek of postmodernism. Imagine if postmodern addressed extrasensory worlds, magical landscapes of ayahuasca lords, tropical galleries, space churches, the worship of criticism and the act of categorization and compartmentalization as holy duality. It’s not taken too seriously.

Are there other things you want to try in order to achieve the goal of incorporating the audience more? For example, you’ve offered to let anyone in the crowd play your guitar during certain sets. Is that the direction you’re heading in?

It depends on if we’re performing presupposed songs or purely improvising. In an improvisational setting we’re interested in giving the audience full responsibility of the “master pitch,” controlling a small variation (A400hz to 432hz) of our full sound’s intonation. We’ve performed in A432hz, a slightly lower pitched tuning system which tends to add a globular effect to the timbre and tones. The master pitch would be controllable by some kind of globe, which depending on its 3D direction slowly determines the pitch shift. We’ve also performed without performing—basically by setting up a system of instruments and effects that we like, and through that system anybody can produce dense ambient pads and textures that can variate and swirl forever. Hobos tend to be good starting points for finding a source of sonic spontaneity and vibrancy.

You come from a musical family and started creating music at a very young age. How has that shaped you as an artist?

I’ve both reacted against it and happily absorbed it. I come from a well-trained family of musicians, and in a way I negated the structure of classical training, although I did in fact go through that whole schema at one point. My most obvious reaction was in the choice (or inherent desire) to take the intuitive route towards art and music making. Most others in my family know exactly what they’re doing before they touch pen to page, hand to instrument. I lean towards those arbitrary thoughts that leave the ego, concepts, and cultural context as much out of the equation as possible. In a sense I don’t compose much, but allow compositions to happen. This is a direct reaction and alchemical mixture of my musical family.

You’ve been working on a piece called “Hermetic Dawn” based on the temple of Kamak in Luxor, Egypt. What makes you interested in Egypt and other Middle Eastern locations as a source of aesthetic inspiration?

R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz has some good books on the topic, namely ‘The Temple In Man‘ changed my life. John Anthony West also is a good introduction into the topic of Egyptian sacred sciences, as well as Dr. Robert Gilbert, USA representative of BioGeometry, a new vibrational engineering science based on the ancient Egyptian technology of how shapes affect energy. Dr. Ibrahim Karim founded BioGeometry in Cairo, Egypt, and is slowly but surely getting his miraculous wisdom out into the world. My purpose in life is to incorporate the symbols of BioGeometry in order to siphon in measurable harmonious energies into artwork and music. This is where artwork, or even nature, escapes beyond subjective criticism and conceptual understanding, and enters into a universally healing functionality rather than a simplified discourse of metaphors. The medium is the message, the medium being the audio or artwork, the message being the qualitative effects of these sacred symbols.

“Hermetic Dawn” is an improvisational temple, which includes five obelisks which all emanate different improvisations I’ve done with various musicians. The center obelisk is a beat I sampled from Herbie Hancock‘s ‘Head Hunters‘ band. In the middle of the screen is a BioGeometrical medallion that is supposed to have profound electro-magnetic effects on the environment and on biology. I’m not sure if the effects occur with the medallion being a digital image, because I think it depends on the harmonics that occur in the physical elements (gold, silver) used to make the medallion, in congruency with the spectrum of electro-magnetism. But I think it’s sort of a gag that it can exist in a digital space, simply being a representation of BioGeometry. I’m just trying to spread the knowledge as much as possible while continuing my art practice, so these are the kind of projects that occur.

Do you think the purpose of art is primarily to make people feel a certain way? What is the role of criticism? Do you think post-modern criticism has interfered with the visceral effects of art?

The interference is mostly isolated within the art world, just as criticism has had a history of appealing to itself, or other critics, or the political environment that revolves around institutional critique and its heavy hierarchical structure. Subjectivity is great in the way that it reveals our individuality, our differences. In that way it is a dualistic cultural generator, like a stimulant force of incomprehensible altered states of thought. I’m more interested in the unified thought, or the panoramic thought, where the digestion of an artwork is in the experience or sensation rather than the rational explanation or metaphorical value. A mutual experience in this kind of work is a relationship that bonds inexplicable sensual feelings, vibes rather than concepts. Its like the difference between someone’s gaze and someone’s enunciation. Both can tell so much about a person.

If you had unlimited resources and could use any space, what would your dream installation look like?

Hmmm… I can’t definitively explain, I can just give hints to what elements it would include. Instead of an installation it’d more be like a temple for spiritual dads. Maybe it could switch its functionality everyday—one day it’s a church, the next a restaurant, the next a motel. And the employees of the temple gallery would fuck with you. The windows would look out on digital rainforest environments, there would be crystalline steps leading up to white lodges filled with cats. Maybe one room can have a Bob Dylan song playing and have a window looking out on Iceland with a half eaten burrito sitting on the window sill. It could just go on and on… as long as its disorienting, magical, and making fun of itself. And exotic.

Curated by Speaker Snacks & Poppy Red.

The post Visualized: Vinyl Williams appeared first on PORTALS.

Jackson Scott plays his sweeping ode to Sandy Hook with the latest track from his upcoming record, Melbourne.

While the events of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting were disturbing and continue to haunt our country, this song serves as a tribute to those lives lost rather than a political commentary. It reflects the innocence of the children’s lives while constructing a heart-wrenching narrative: from darkness there must come beauty, for this is how we reconcile what horrors we see in life. Scott urges his listener to celebrate the children. In the face of such a shattering tragedy, this can be near impossible. Our hearts are left broken for the children and their families and others effected by the event, but this beautifully simple tune reminds us of how we learn to cope with these tragedies.

Scott’s forthcoming full-length will greet fans on July 23rd via Fat Possum.

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In this edition of PORTALS Sessions, we continued up the trail for another mountain show. We reached the peak and watched The Spookfish perform their moody track, “Moon Viewing Road.” The dark song set the appropriate tone for the bleakly beautiful scenery and eerie wind.

Watch for yourself below:

Video By:
Daniel Dorsa (Producer / Camera / Editor)
Dan Goldberg (Producer)
Andrew Miksch (Audio)

The post Video: The Spookfish – “Moon Viewing Road” (PORTALS Sessions) appeared first on PORTALS.

Saint Pepsi is the moniker for the anonymous vaporwave beat connoisseur that helped give the world Winner’s Circle and Empire Building. These past releases have been filled with synthetic ambiance lifted from corporate elevators or market brand commercial haze and dripped onto drunken funk loops.

Pepsi‘s latest string of singles, however, have been focused on a more dance-heavy modus operandi, and the results are nothing short of sweaty. “Better” is a dancefloor-ready disco thunderstorm. Horn blasts, sweeping chime trees, and splashes of screwed percussion populate this rush of hip-busting, head-nodding pop extravagance. Be careful not to break your neck, though. With soulful vocal loops that affirm, “Love, I can make it better for you,” you’ll be certain you are invincible to all dance competitions. Don’t sleep on this track—get those knees knocking and heads spinning and pray that Pepsi has more in store.

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Melbourne’s Friendships dropped this special mix this week as a little prelude to their joining with the Silo Records family in Brisbane. More details on that at a later date.

From Friendships:

This collection of songs are my gutz. An intestinal reflection of shit I have always and recently loved. Friends’ music. Musical heroes. Videogame culture. Internet. Real people; friends + family n shit.

Boom-bap feeds breaks, spews ghetto. Dumb house a capellas introducing local witch rhythms, swooning switchy skitz beat and croon singing shit. Dangerous booty, big groove and bass. Electronic Australiana and raw guitar slingerz. Delicate and hot shit, ya feel?? 

Hope you pricks like it. <3 U 4 ∞

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Sure, guitar solos are a thing of wonder if you can pull them off. Tightly-knit acoustic patterns are impressive too, unless you’re the kind of guy that buzzkills house parties just to show off some Oasis covers. But if I could truly play the guitar to my heart’s content—and let’s face it, playing a couple of dodgy online Spoon tabs doesn’t count—I’d just live in the thing. The tones, the pulse, the overarching glow of the whole thing. One pedal and couple of strings and we’re away.

Jeanette Street finds solace in every open string, each heart-swelling pressure change. The three songs on her Three Songs EP are classed as “devotional” on Bandcamp. Devotional in the sense that she’s devoting everything to these extended piece, ranging from five to nine minutes. The opener is dusky and Grouper-like in its strung out drag, while the closer gets by on optimistic, muted patterns that stream by like an open-view of golden fields on some wild, imagined train journey. Beauty in despondence and beauty in the open air—Jeanette Street hones in at each of these, just as effectively as the other.

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