Ultra Music Festival continues to be a highlight across the live calendar, from Japan to its legendary cityscape event in Miami, the latter was certain to be a sparkling jewel in the crown of an amazing run of live dates for Hardwell. From his now-iconic to the scene live sets that have been watched by millions online, Hardwell is pleased to now reveal his full Ultra Miami headline live set for 2017 become part of the movement and join united with Hardwell and his fans across all corners of the globe.
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Satellite Ravens – Changes
Hatched in Arizona and with wings affixed in California, Satellite Ravens is as close to a one-man band as you can get without the spectacle of someone with cymbals strapped to their knees and an array of whistles around their neck. The creator is a multi-instrumentalist, Carson Rohde; his vehicle, the many-headed psychedelic funk gull, Satellite Ravens; the album, a mind-expanding zoo of colorful characters from this world and beyond, from yesterday and tomorrow. The hippy vibes are back for a new generation and lift-off is available any time you’re ready.
With Rohdes’ behemoth-like bass guitar skills very much to the fore, “The Equinox” has the shuffling, staggering drums of the 90’s Madchester scene, but with the Day-Glo smarts of US bands like MGMT and early Flaming Lips. From the swooning joy of Suffocated, with its Ween-esque mischievousness to the pseudo-mystical Chili Peppers dream-funk of Encircled, each track builds into an ever-expanding universe, twisting back on itself and latching onto new rhythms, writhing gleefully as it morphs into an entirely new animal. If Space Rock to you is Hawkwind or Spacemen 3, think again – this is the real sound of the cosmos: playful; intriguing but also joyful.
Rather like the deliberately distressed Yes-like album cover, Satellite Ravens have their tongue somewhat in their cheek, but this belies their huge musical talent and often intriguing lyrical content. With elements of jazz, classical, funk, 80s rock and 90s underground psych, this is an album which grows in magnificence with each subsequent listen. Prepare to follow Satellite Ravens in orbit.
LINKS:
https://soundcloud.com/satellite_ravens
https://open.spotify.com/artist/4DWM8jTdcf2wyyWt3a7SzV
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuJAay056LCLnCks9ua9Duw?view_as=subscriber
https://www.facebook.com/satellite.ravens
https://twitter.com/satelliteravens
https://www.instagram.com/satellite.ravens
https://satelliteravens.com -
Your 33 Black Angels – Hott Funn
Your 33 Black Angels (a.k.a. Y33BA) has announced their new album ‘Eternities I’, which is their seventh long-play to date, to be released in early May. Ahead of that, they are previewing the lead track ‘Hott Funn’.
Recorded over three years and more than 60 studio days with endless mixes in the making, ‘Eternities I’ is 13 tracks that are built to stand as the culmination of Y33BA’s labors.
Based out of New York City, Y33BA is a long-running noise-pop freakshow. This genre-defying project has its own stamp of dark pop, electro-paisley new wave space rock, with a dose of crunk bass and rhythm. They produce elegant vibrant melodies with strange, novel sounds. This is the New Age underground for the End Times.
How do a group that has danced around sensibilities and sounds refresh the template? More cutting-edge instruments and riskier, avant-garde pop songs than ever. Imagine Madchester, and imagine dream pop meets Aphex Twin. Imagine the bastard child of Arthur Russell, Rain Parade and Rza and add original 21st century sound design and guitar webs.
This is a radical, angry, watermark record. Designed to embrace and rattle against the times. Combining haute popcraft with touches of the undercurrents of our lives–acid house, Paisley Underground, synth wave, field recordings, minimal electronica and epic RAWK.
As well, the Y33BA wordsmiths have always been equal part poetry fans as lyricists, so the Poesia Concreta of Augusto de Campos or Guillaume Apollonaire may have as much influence as wonderful lyricists like Neil Hannon, Bjork or Serge Gainsbourg. Breaking rhythms and broken meter match the polarized sounds from start to finish.
Formed in 2003, Y33BA debuted with the album ‘Lonely Street’ in 2007, which was a vinyl-only limited edition. Once the initial pressings sold out, Y33BA released the album on CD and digitally. They followed up with ‘Tales of my Pop-Rock Love Life’ (2008), ‘Pagan Princess’ (2009), ‘Songs from the Near Bleak Future’ (Optical Sounds, 2010), ‘Moon and Morning Star’ ( Optical Sounds, 2012) and ‘Glamour’ (2015).
In that time, they have played over 500 shows across Europe and North America, sharing the stage with some rather fine acts during recent tours. The Monochrome Set selected Y33BA as the direct support act for its first New York City show in 30 years. La Femme, The Veldt and Dyr Faser have toured or shared many nights with the group. The band has also played with King Tuff, Blitzen Trapper, Suuns, Six Organs of Admittance, Blonde Elvis, B-17 and We Melt Chocolate.
The video for ‘Hott Funn’ was made by Richie of Vinyl Villains. “Richie is a mysterious Bushwick programmer that doesn’t leave his loft til the light has disappeared and the day has turned to dark. He is part vampire, part design whiz. He has invented an automated animation program that turns songs into aliens, furry creatures, whatever the sound seems to suggest. Obviously, Your 33 Black Angels has a very alien sound, but he might have horses singing to Neil Young, vegan cupcakes singing Fiona Apple, dolphins singing Supergrass, etc. Richie is so ineffable and distant, we don’t even know his last name. All we know is he commands legions of aliens, faeries, and elves. Literally, that’s what he does!”
Y33BA ‘Eternities I’ is slated for release on May 7 and will be available across digital stores and streaming platforms. It can also be pre-ordered via Bandcamp. The band’s album release show will take place on May 10 at Alphaville in Brooklyn.
“A delight of jangling guitars, spacey-sweet vocals, and electronic squiggles, a psych record rooted in beat-pop and experimentalism”
– Village Voice (on ‘Glamour’)“One of this year’s treasures… is worth the hunt for its pop-wise rattle (Pavement with a case of the Strokes) and singer Josh Westfal’s resemblance, in dry, frank voice and cautious optimism, to another local institution: Lou Reed on the Velvet Underground’s fourth album, Loaded”
– Rolling Stone (On ‘Lonely Street’)“This is dark electric frenzied New Wave space-rock, blasting by like a fiery and unexpected sonic guest, clearly defying genres and interacting with cosmic messengers”
– Big Takeover Magazine“Retro-leaning, though hardly flower pop fetishists… pacey keyboard textures and groove-oriented arrangements, while their penchant for laid-back Daniel Johnston vocals and warbly lo-fi riffs more closely resembles the classic college rock of Pavement and Built to Spill”
– NOW Toronto (On ‘Songs from the Near Bleak Future’)“Your 33 Black Angels are known for frenetic, unpredictable shows. the interlocking guitars sometimes surged into what seemed like an eternal groove”
– Washington Post (live review)LINKS:
https://www.facebook.com/your33blackangels
https://y33ba.bandcamp.com
https://twitter.com/y33ba
https://www.instagram.com/y33ba
https://soundcloud.com/y33ba
https://itunes.apple.com/bn/artist/your-33-black-angels/271047566 -
Atmosphere – Virgo
Defining success is not an exact science by any means. In some ways, it’s especially difficult to quantify one’s success when they have a job that places them in the public eye, a position that is ripe for critique and high expectations. Perhaps those who best thrive in those scenarios are the ones who can navigate through all noise and continue to evolve and grow, both in their skill sets and as individuals.
In many ways, that is an integral part of the Atmosphere story. Over their twenty-year career, they have managed to continually tweak and strive to perfect their formula, while neither straying too far off their path nor resorting to playing it safe. Starting at 1997’s Overcast, the group’s first official album, and traveling through 18 years of new albums, side projects (e.g. the Sad Clown series and Felt), and various collaborations, all the way up until 2014’s Southsiders album, Atmosphere’s music has evolved in a way that differs from many of their peers and predecessors. A hard look at that evolution doesn’t reveal the commonalities of following trends or struggling to fit in, by either over-extending in an effort to stay cool to the younger generation, or succumbing to the pressure people tend to place on artists to maintain the same sound from album to album. Instead, the Atmosphere discography evolves in a natural way.
Musically, Ant has continued to define Atmosphere’s sound, ranging from a healthy mixture of upbeat and fun to the oft more iconic, moody and personal. Throughout the 1990s, Ant spent countless hours in his basement with a wealth of records, a keyboard sampler, a turntable and a 4-track, working with a who’s who of the Twin Cities’ Rap talent of that time. Those experiences tuned his ear, molded his work ethic, and shaped his vision. In turn, those lessons have continually become more prominent in the Atmosphere aesthetic, blending live musicians and sampled production with his keen sense of how to compose a well-arranged song.
As for the lyrics, Slug started his passion for rhyming with an obsessive-like penchant for the way words intersect, as well as how those words can be manipulated for unexpected and clever meanings. But, at the same time, early on Slug expressed an interest in doing more than simply proving he could be witty, but also writing about subjects that speak to people personally, as well as emotionally. These practices also naturally helped the Atmosphere fan base to expand beyond the usual independent Hip Hop audience, extending their reach to an alternative audience who also related to the personable appeal and emotional range of both Slug’s songwriting and Ant’s musical backdrops. Particularly, Slug has been consistently successful in leveraging his understanding for the power of words, recognizing that a song containing the right story or personal perspective can be extremely effective in capturing and holding the listener’s attention.
Undoubtedly, the impact of Atmosphere’s music has been the roots to their long-term success, but their continued rigorous touring and performance schedule has been the vessel for engraining these stories and the legacy of the music into their fan base. Early on in their careers, Atmosphere stepped beyond the genre lines and performed shows throughout the Twin Cities with Rock bands, Punk Rock bands, and Jazz Ensembles. This was directly influenced by the fact that both of them were already fans of a wide range of music. Although this was a natural reaction to being a fan of the music, that experience also afforded Atmosphere, and their Rhymesayers peers, the opportunity to witness first-hand the D.I.Y ethos shared by some of these other musical movements.
Atmosphere began to apply many of these tactics and work ethics to their growth, which was specifically influential in the development of Atmosphere’s approach to touring. These strategies found Atmosphere expanding their tours into cities that few if any, Rap artists were including in their routing. The result is a storied connection between the artists and the listeners, which has grown into long-term Atmosphere fans passing down that experience to their children and so on, and thus continually ushering in a new generation of Atmosphere fans. Early on in their touring excursions, Atmosphere shows were noted in history for challenging the idea that Hip-Hop audiences had to be filled exclusively with scowl-faced males fueled by ego and testosterone. Instead, they created an environment that invited women to join in on the party. All of these factors have led to a fan base that ranges from ages 14-54 and beyond, and one that remains solid, as well as ever evolving.
As Atmosphere steps into their 21st year of making music, Slug & Ant show no signs of slowing, compromising or losing sight of their vision. Nor has time revealed any diminishing of those qualities that have brought them this far. As 2016 swung into gear, Atmosphere had already ended the previous year and led into another with a string of singles, and still have an abundance of music on the way, including their latest album, “Fishing Blues”. The title of the new album speaks directly to the sentiments that opened this bio; Is this the point in the career where Atmosphere chooses to step back, put up the Gone Fishin’ sign and reminisce about their successes? The answer, a resounding no, is found in the music, a collection of songs that both define and redefine the Atmosphere sound. Their passion and creative spark are as illuminating as ever. Slug and Ant still have plenty of stories to tell.
SOURCE: Official Bio
LINKS:
http://rhymesayers.com/atmosphere
https://www.facebook.com/Atmosphere
https://instagram.com/atmosphere
https://snapchat.com/add/seanmosphere
https://twitter.com/atmosphere