I caught Tonya Morgan’s last song during their performance at The Music Hall of Williamsburg during Converses showcase. The mob of people outside was a complete shit show. After some complications me and my boy Layton were able to get inside. Thanks Jacob at Converse. I didn’t really get set until half way through this video. So it’s a little sketchy. I literally just walked into the venue got my cam out and tried to get what I could aiming over heads. Enjoy!

via: blaqbook.com

Kendrick Lamar

If you listened to our blog-o-meter last week, then you attended Warm Up and were privy to three brand new songs from Atoms For Peace; so new that Thom Yorke was singing lyrics out of a little book on at least one of them.  It was quite the spectacle: moist pony-tail peering over a composition notebook full of unintelligible lyrics (they need to do something about that PA at PS1.)  We’ve got a host of bloggable shows for you again this week, as you could have guessed.

The most BLOGGED ABOUT show this week is one for the kids; a hip-hop show from the ultra-buzzed Kendrick Lamar at Terminal 5 on Saturday, with support from fellow blog rappers Ab Soul, Jay Rock, Stalley and Fly Union.

That’s all well and good, but this week is all about Thrill Jockey for me.  The label is celebrating their 20^th anniversary, and they’re doing it in style with two incredible showcases.  Friday night, Death By Audio hosts a virtual whos-who of today’s experimental scene: White Hills, Guardian Alien, Man Forever, Dan Friel and Rhyton and on Saturday, TORTOISE RETURNS to headline the night’s festivities with Future Islands, Matmos, Liturgy and D. Charles Speer in this week’s EDITOR’S PICK.

(more…)

You can listen to it all here.

For a band with a firm grasp on pristine, precise production and immaculate vocal harmonies, Grizzly Bear can be inscrutable at times: Its members have been known to use their formidable studio chops in the pursuit of what can sound like puzzles waiting to be solved.

Take “Sleeping Ute,” the lead track from Grizzly Bear’s fourth album, the follow-up to its 2009 breakthrough Veckatimest. With its lush flourishes and strange psychedelic side roads, the song lurches in about six directions at once, testing listeners who like their songs to travel in straight lines. Shields (out Sept. 18) can be hard to latch onto in spots, but it rewards the effort — with both strange sonic surprises and a few hooky, expansive ringers.

With vocals that recall the choirboy-in-a-cavern anthemics of My Morning Jacket, “Half Gate” and especially “Yet Again” find a catchy, agreeable compromise between experimentation and soaring grace. In other spots, Shields gets spare and quiet — particularly in “The Hunt” and “What’s Wrong,” both of which drift into airy, barely there minimalism. By the time it winds down, the album has found an effective way to fuse its gentle and majestically booming sides in the seven-minute knockout “Sun in Your Eyes.”

Sometimes delicate and eccentric, at others grandiose — and always many steps beyond the Brooklyn band’s beginnings as a home-recording project for singer Ed Droste — Shields rarely sounds like a bid for greater commercial success. But it does showcase the considerable gifts of four guys willing to hover patiently through the detours, without sacrificing the beauty that makes the journey worthwhile.

After Riot Fest at Williamsburg Park was cancelled due to the tornado that hit the city, Descendents and Hot Water Music headed over to Saint Vitus to play a free and intimate show. 20 minutes after the show was announced, 800 people clogged the sidewalk in front of the small Greenpoint bar. 300 (give or take) made it in. The show of course was nuts. Watch video edits of both sets below.

From the TASTE Williamsburg Greenpoint website:

TASTE Williamsburg Greenpoint is an outdoor celebration of North Brooklyn’s local flavor… A block party style tasting event, held rain or shine, featuring sample tastes from over 40 of the neighborhood’s best restaurants, breweries, and wineries, along with live music and much more… SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 9TH, 2012

1pm to 5pm- Main Tasting Event- enjoy appetizer size (4oz.) food tastes from a selection of over 40 local restaurants along with complimentary sips(3oz.)of craft brews, NY State Wines, and specialty cocktails from our sponsors.

Participants to include:
Baci & Abbracci, The Bedford, Bellwether, Blue Collar, Brooklyn Brewery, Brooklyn Oenology, Brooklyn Winery, Cafe Colette, Cafe de la Esquina, Cafe Mogador, Crif Dogs, Cubana Social, Dressler & DuMont, Fabbrica, Gourmet Guild, GuS – Grown-up Soda, Hotel Delmano, Juliette, Kinfolk Studios, La Nonna, Le Comptoir, Le Gamin, Lighthouse, Lodge & Urban Rustic, Lokal Bistro, Loreley Restaurant & Biergarten, Maison Premiere, Matt Torrey’s, McClure’s Pickles, The Meatball Shop, Mesa Coyoacan, Miller’s Tavern, Natural Wine Co., Nita Nita, Oslo Coffee Roasters, Pelzer’s Pretzels, Pies n’ Thighs, Plan Tea Beverages, PT Restaurant, Rabbithole Bistro, Reynards, Sel de Mer, The Shanty, Spike Hill, Station, Sweetwater Restaurant & Bakeri, Teddy’s Bar and Grill, Toby’s Estate Coffee, Two Door Tavern, Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream

Get tickets here

You can listen to it all here.

There’s essentially no way for a collaboration between Talking Heads’ David Byrne and St. Vincent’s Annie Clark to exceed the sum of its parts. Each artist is distinctive enough, and dominant enough over the work on which he or she appears, that their sensibilities can’t be blended so much as stacked in such a way that they coexist simultaneously. Still, Love This Giant (out Sept. 11) brings Byrne and Clark together in provocative and frequently exciting ways, thanks in part to a slyly funky horn section and an overarching sense of brainy boldness.

Though they swap lead-vocal duties, Byrne’s jittery, globe-trotting eclecticism tends to overshadow Clark’s efforts, in part because the horns’ volume forces her guitar work out of the foreground. But Byrne sounds more invigorated than he has in years, and as one of the best young singers, arrangers and guitarists in the business, Clark possesses a craftsmanship-intensive oddness which meshes nicely with his.

Besides the considerable talent on display here — in addition to the headliners, the album features the work of producers John Congleton and Patrick Dillett, as well as guests Antibalas and The Dap-Kings in the horn-flooded “The One Who Broke Your Heart” — the key ingredient on Love This Giant is energy. There’s a funky, live-wire, anything-goes feel throughout the record, as it honks and soars through strange ruminations on aging, culture and nature, while showcasing a persistent flair for movement and mayhem.