As we’ve come to expect in recent years, LA’s FYF Fest has announced it’s 2013 lineup and it’s a doozy. This year’s installment features a slew of modern alternative and indie rock from today and yesteryear. Headlining on night one are Yeah Yeah Yeahs, TV on the Radio and Flag (the supergroup of ex-Black Flag members Chuck Dukowski, Keith Morris and Bill Stevenson performing Black Flag songs). Night two features the first U.S. performance of My Bloody Valentine since their slot at Coachella 2009. Joining them at the top of the bill are MGMT (who have been strangely quiet lately), Beach House, Solange, Yo La Tengo and mxdwn favorites, The Melvins.
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Glo-Fidelity
With indie music bloggers living by the semi-ironic phrase “chillwave is dead” or “glo-fi is dead,” the genre has only given birth to more ambient, over-reverberated pop. The resurgence of shoegaze and dream pop has also revived those interested in textural, ethereal music. Limits of Desire is Small Black’s contribution to a genre still headed by the likes of Toro Y Moi and Washed Out. Let’s be glad they’re brave enough to do so.
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Daydream Beginning
Eluvium: Noun.
1. Residual deposits of soil, dust and rock particles produced by the action of the wind.
2. One stage name of Matthew Cooper, experimental electronic musician.
Nightmare Ending is Cooper’s most recent album, a meandering collection of thickly atmospheric pieces that are as naturalistic as the artist’s pseudonym implies. Here, Eluvium composes the score of his own unknowable film. This soothing, meditative record combines several genres into one constantly evolving whole, gently brushing elements of shoe-gaze, classical romanticism and ambient music over a quiet landscape.
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Montreal’s Rebecca Foon Sees in Sound
Montreal cellist and local band contemporary Rebecca Foon, performing under the moniker Saltland, rises above obscure and nebulous song titles and band names to deliver a moving symphony of strings and voices. Newly released on Constellation, this solo debut from the ex-Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra and Tra-la-la Band member, titled I Thought It Was Us But It Was All Of Us, is a moody art-film soundtrack waiting to happen. In fact, Foon has several soundtrack credits to her name.
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Music for Very Long, Pointy Goatees
Steve Von Till was introduced to the music world in 1989 as the singer and guitar player for a metal band called Neurosis. In 2000, he released As The Crow Flies, a stripped-down, acoustic record that is, for all intents and purposes, a metal record, albeit one with hushed vocals and 99% of the exhilaration (and backing tracks) removed. Amazingly, this is a reissue. There was a time when reissues were for important records or for badly-mastered older records. Perhaps times have changed.
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