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Monday, April 23, 2012

RADIO: Special Thanks to thesirenssound.com

Tonight, Bart and I have a mess of new and obscure music made possible in part by the good people at www.TheSirensSound.com. It's a great forum for post-rock and the like. Check it out and listen to the great bands they're presenting. Everyone will appreciate you, including your karma...

I opened the night with Ulrich Schnauss and "Goodbye", followed by "A Time To Be So Small" by Interpol, and closed out my set with a long song by Red Sparowes called "Mechanical Sounds Cascaded Through the City Walls and Everyone Revelled in Their Ignorance". No joke. Best title for a song ever.

Bart's first set features some awesome songs, too.  His opening song, "Snow and Light" is by Explosions in the Sky, a band some have called THE post-rock band. Their soundtrack to the football movie "Friday Night Lights" is arguably what made that movie so emotionally pulling. He followed this with a new release from The American Dollar called "Heavy Eyes Ignite". Their new album, "Awake In The City" just came out last month, and we're happy that KRBD is one of the first stations in the US to feature this band. Follow this with "Islands" by The Xx, a band with one of the sexiest female vocals I've ever heard, then "No Strands" by Ratatat, "Cherry Tree" by The National, and he closed out his set with "Like Knives" by City And Colour, a band who's singer has a wonderful, icy voice.

I opened up my second set with "Monuments And Melodies" by Incubus, a special track recorded at Red Rocks Amphitheatre just outside of Denver, Colorado. I followed this up with "He Says He Had He Sun" by Haida and "Weather To Fly" by English alt-rock studs "Elbow". "Friend of the Night" by Mogwai came next, a song from their 2006 album "Mr. Beast", which Allmusic has said was "possibly the most accisble yet sophisticated album Mogwai (have) released." This shot was chased by another track by The National called "England", which closed the set.

Bart's second set was another awesome round of Bartholomew D. Opening with the awesome energy of Lykke Li, we played "I Follow River", followed by Ratatat's groovy "El Pico", a song that it's impossible not to bob your head to. Rounding it out, he played "Hot Like Fire" by The Xx, another new track called "As We Float" by The American Dollar, and "Welcome Ghosts" by Explosions In The Sky.

Our finale was a song called "The Fall" by a band called From Oceans to Autumn. The album is an EP simply called "The Flood/The Fall EP", named after the two tracks on it. This is a very good, heavy sampling of instrumental post-rock. If Caspian were PG and Cloudkicker were R, this would be PG-13... a nice blending of heavy guitar, a faster pace, and a synthetic orchestral overtone. It was an excellent way to close out yet another episode of The BattleWagon Chronicles, hosted so graciously by member-supported KRBD Ketchikan, community radio. If you love this music, or even if you read this blog and don't like the music, call the station at (907) 225-9655 and throw a couple bucks this way. It makes all the difference.

CHRONICLES: "Cars", Food, and Chores

Lyss left town Thursday to go to a raver's reunion back in Denver. That's left Bart and Malcolm and me to fend for ourselves, and while it's probably a horrid thing to say, I've gotten a tremendous amount of stuff done since she's been gone. We ran to the dump this morning, as well as stopped off at the shop to email off some sticker designs to Denver. Then Bart left and went to do stage-work for First City Players, and I stayed home, did dishes, cleaned the front hall, took Mlcolm outside to check out a boat, and caught up with my friend Ryan. The plan for the evening is to get some grub, pick up a grll, maybe do some burgers and what not, and just enjoy a nice Alaskan evening. We got an invite to go to the Monthly Grind out in Saxman. That's a local variety show of sorts, and tonight's is hosted by our friends Jenn and Claire. Claire stopped by on her way in, looking a '60's-era fabulous. However, Bart and I have been looking forward to some down time. Malcolm took a short nap in the car earlier, so we're hopin he passes out early.

We supplimented our movie collection with the first "Cars" movie, a very refreshing change of animated pace. I got a little sick of the second one.

Phew.

All of this stuff going on, and I still feel very empowered knowing that I'm doing a pretty good job being a single dad for a week. In some ways, it's even a little easier than negotiating the typical marriage lines. Of course, in other ways, it's substancially more difficult.

But, we humans keep plugging away, yes?