it.is.imperative

it.is.imperative - Immer Weiter Und Weiter (2007)

it.is.imperative are a German post hardcore/screamo band from Germany. I'm not too sure how I came across these guys a few years ago but for someone who hadn't listened to a lot of "real" screamo, I (none the less) enjoyed their sound right away. I really feel as though these guys are highly listenable even for people who don't like said (sub)genres above. If you don't like German though... this is probably not for you.

PS: They are dead...

Last.fm 

Monday XXXXVI

Ayeyeye!

Wheelchair Sports Camp - Where We Live EP (2012)

Wheelchair Sports Camp is a disabled, but held down by no one, female rapper from Denver. I had a chance to see her perform the other night at a hip-hop show (+ drag show but that's a story for another time) that truly blew me away! Accompanied by live sax and drum work from the "renegade marching band", What Cheer? Brigade, Wheelchair Sports Camp relentlessly spit deep rhymes, only coming for air to thank everyone for showing up on time and that she was from Denver. I was really impressed by her rapping ability and how her flow with the electronic beats and live instruments blended together.

Despite being confined to a wheelchair, she seems very free with the music she is making! I hope to see her and 'Wheelchair Sports Camp' get the recognition they deserve. Listen up!

Last.fm


3nd - World Tour (2009)

 Really superb math rock from Japan. Like a lot of other Japanese math groups but a little more energetic sounding at times like Pneu or early Tera Melos but also have a very sharp post rock side to them as well. The speed is what I enjoy most, hands down.

Last.fm

Rob Sonic - Sabotage Gigante (2007)

Saw this at a local record store the other day for 2 bucks and remembered how much I liked it after hearing some of Sonic's stuff on the Tony Hawk games (where I got most of my hip-hop taste from truthfully. Looking back on the games though, the hip-hop featured in the series was actually pretty high class stuff!). My rediscovery of this album only strengthens my current hip-hop mood I'm in and is hopefully appropriate for you guys too!

Stand out tracks include, "Smoke If You Got 'um" featuring Aesop Rock, "Spy Hunter" featuring Busdriver, and "Mother Of All Bombs" which can be heard in Tony Hawk's American Wasteland!

Last.fm

Sorry for the links. Things got worse this week as my keyboard tricked me into letting me use all caps but signed me out of my Google accounts. I can't seem to get back in even though I have copy pasta'd my password into the password box multiple times... My keyboard is now back to symbols only and I'm doing this on my smart phone of choice that kind of rhymes with fuckyouimnotgoingtoworkPhone.

Monday XXXXV

Laptop died. Laptop lived. Keyboard dead.

The End Of The Ocean - In Excelsis (MMXII)

Just some nice instrumental post rock out of Columbus, Ohio. Tracks one and three are top pops.

THE CD CAN BE PLAYED ON A TURNTABLE!
Last.fm

Babytown Frolics - Reminds You Of Drugs You've Heard Of (MMXI)

Twinkly math rock about whales, science, drugs, and keeping it real. They're from New Haven, I believe.

Last.fm

Daitro - Des cendres, je me consumme (MMIII)

An oldie by one of the best in the "screamo" business. These french lads are the reason I listen to some of the things I do now. Do yourself a favor and listen to these guys if you don't already now! For your health!

Last.fm

It's been a week since I spilled my iced tea on my laptop keyboard causing it to short circuit and go into a momentary laptop coma. The laptop finally came to the next day but the keyboard itself thinks it is in alt/Option mode... which means without this being typed out in google translator, everything looks like this: Òˆ´ ˇÓˆÍ ÂŘ˝¯ ˆˇ ‰´ÅÒÒÁ ‰´ÅÒÒÁ ͨÇÍ Å˜Î ˆÍ ∏ˆÍ͈˜˝ ´ ‰ˆ˝Óˇ ØÏÏ


I hope to have everything back in order this week, especially with August coming up and this blog's 1 year anniversary. Until I fully figure out all the bugs and kinks though, please excuse the appearance of my latest posts. I also hope to edit last week's Monday post back into its correct form that I had originally planned it to be in. Please and thank you ~ New Keith

Monday XXXXIV

Just for fun.

Octaves - Greener Pastures (2010)

Octaves are a chaotic hardcore band from Baltimore that totally rip shit up. They were also the surprise band that played with Duck. Little Brother, Duck! last week. 'Surprise' because they weren't put on the bill and advertised and 'surprise' because once they got set up they just started going to town on their tracks and blasted some sweet and heavy hardcore music into my and all those there to witness's ears with no real warning or chit chat. No messing around. It was fast, it was intense, it got really intense, it was loud, and it was over just like that. They may have had the biggest and loudest amps I have ever seen in a little punk house basement. When congratulating these guys on a job well down after making my friend's ears bleed, they mentioned that, "this was the quietest we have ever played". Damn.

These guys have definitely done their homework on experimental and post, yesterday and today hardcore. Stay tuned for more of these guys to come as they got themselves a new one coming in the fall, supposedly!

Also: mad props to these guys for the Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! reference with, "Fix The Fern Back". If you don't know what I mean, check this out!

Last.fm

Lester Freamon - Natural Police (2011)

After the DLBD!/Octaves show (local math wizards The Waldos and local new doom, old faces Horace played them on) I picked up Duck. Little Brother, Duck!'s new album, 'Don't Take Our Filth Away' (which everyone should check out before I butcher it with a boring review) and with it I got a nice little sampler from Friends For Life Records that featured some, if not most, of what they've got to offer as far as bands go from their label. Along with familiar names like The Sky Above and Earth Below, Cower, DLBD!, The Caution Children, others that aren't, and Grandfather (the metalcore one); I also noticed that Lester Freamon was on it and remembered that I was going to write about them... I didn't but now I am. That is the card I'm playing.

Lester Freamon is a hardcore/punk/screamo band probably from Portland, Oregon. This is Natural Police, a four songer about killing cops and blowing things up. Maybe not but I like to think so. Their name and album name comes from the HBO series The Wire, based out of Baltimore, Maryland and the fictional character in it named, Lester Freamon. I've watched one episode of The Wire and he wasn't in it.

Bandcamp
Last.fm

White Savages - White Savages Live (2010)

White Savages is a punk/math rock band from Connecticut that features Spencer Shoop who was in a pretty gnarly instrumental math rock band know as Good Citizens who, lasting only a year and a half, broke up sometime last year. White Savages though are much more on the, well... savage side than Good Citizens ever were. White Savages Live is no work of art by any means. It's rough man, but so is life... that's why I like it.

Last.fm

Okay- Huggable Dust

Okay is the moniker of Marty Anderson of sporadic math rock band, Dilute. While Dilute was filled with start and stop, taps, and distant bloops and blips; Okay is filled with light-hearted indie rock instrumentation with Marty Anderson really displaying his vocals and all around unique voice... this time... without coming off a little creepy sounding. I love the two bands equally, don't get me wrong, but there is a vastly different approach between them that I felt needed pointing out.

Okay - Huggable Dust (2008)

'Huggable Dust' is Okay's (and Anderson's) 18 song, 2008 release. It features many great little indie gems like "Only", "Natural", "Panda", and "Pretend". I don't listen to as many "indie rock" bands that I did maybe a few years back but there's something about Okay and the way Marty Anderson sings over the music. It's almost as if these songs shouldn't be as delicate as they are; like there's supposed to be chaos in it all and instead it was replaced by beautiful major music. The closest it gets to chaotic is the tracks, "Beast" or "Truce" or "Already" I guess, but even then those still feel like the right amount of noise and balance. All of 'Huggable Dust' is like that actually... really well put together and balanced. With 18 songs on it, I don't think there is ever a time when I listen to it all the way through that I really start to get bored.

Along with Okay, Marty Anderson also has been known to call himself Jacques Kopstein. He has released one album under the name and it's called 'A'. It also features "dreamy and damaged folk pop" (Aquarius Records) but a little more stripped down and experimental.

Similar acts/sounds: Dilute, Jacques Kopstein, Natural Dreamers, Sarcastic Dharma Society, François Virot, car seat headrest, Coma Cinema, Misophone, Phil Elvrum, Karl Blau, Kickball, Foot Ox and other stuff I like...

Myspace
Last.fm

Harriet The Spy

Harriet The Spy was another one of those long since forgotten post hardcore acts that totally deserved a giant fan base or some kind of music cult following but was never the case unfortunately. Harriet The Spy was also another one of those bands that not only shares its name with some kind of TV/book/movie reference but the exact same name of one. Whether or not these guys took the name from Harriet the Spy the award winning children's book from the 60's or right from the Nickelodeon movie adaptation in 1996 starring Michelle Trachtenberg and the one and only Rosie O'Donnell - or even - weren't aware of such book and rather thought they were being clever history buffs and came up with Harriet The Spy after Harriet Tubman who just so happened to be a spy. Damn right she was... 


But yeah... who knows which is true. 

Harriet The Spy, the band, from Kent, Ohio and their only album released aside from some 7inches and splits, Unfuckwithable features noisy instrumentation and post punk, straight out of the 90's vocals (if that is even really a thing).

Harriet The Spy - Unfuckwithable (1997)

Similar acts/sounds: Plunger, Native Nod, Fugazi, Q And Not U, Mohinder, Still Life, Faraquet, Chokebore, Huak, Assfactor 4, Antioch Arrow, and... none of those acts.


Wikipedia fun fact: The pilot episode of Hey Arnold! was played during the airing of Harriet the Spy when it came out in theaters!

Purchase a CD copy from Trouble Man Unlimited (real cheap!)
Last.fm

[Editor's Note: I don't know what's up with the white highlighted text. It's very bothersome and I'm not sure how to fix it/where the problem is/why it is doing that. I apologize if it is also an eyesore for you or if you do not see it and I'm going crazy.]

Monday XXXXIII

Home Alone and not doing anything about it.

Birds In Row - Collected (2012)

French crusty hardcore. Something about the French... They always have a way of making such a used up genre sound just that much interesting again. America buddy, take note.

Bandcamp
Last.fm

This Town Needs Guns - Adventure, Stamina & Anger (2011)

UK's number one poppy math rock act, This Town Needs Guns' little teaser from last year. It is probably also the last TTNG record/EP/single featuring the signature singing of Stuart Smith as he has since left the band to further focus on his family and become a dad. Henry Tremain of another "math pop" act, Pennines is now on vocal duties as well as bass duties after the departure of Jamie Cooper. The line-up may now be a little different but I am still very much looking forward to hearing what these guys have got for us ahead recording/album wise. Just as long as they keep that noodly, upbeat math rock sound going, unlike many other math rock acts who have decided to tone down their technical sounding skills, *cough*Maps & Atlases/Tera Melos/Minus The Bear/screw Minus The Bear*cough*, I will still be a big fan and listener. 


Bandcamp
Last.fm

Cower - Land Before Time (2010)

Heavy and powerful rock from Portland, Oregon. I have this weird feeling I've posting these guys before but I haven't... It's important I do though because I also forget about them until I go back to Duck. Little Brother, Duck!'s bandcamp and look at their recommandations. That being said, this is a really awesome recommandation on those guys' part and I'm pretty pumped to see 'em again tomorrow night!

I just can't help myself when it comes to shameless plugs for other bands while trying to persuade  people to listen to the real band in question. Guess it's okay when both bands are totally gnarly, though... right?

Last.fm

RIP Andy Griffith

RIP

Monday XXXXII

Dig in.

Wavelets - Athaletics (2011)

"Emotionally charged indie rock" blah blah blah twinkly stuff from Gainesville, Florida featuring members of Dikembe and a thousand other bands past and present.  Really digging their EP's and recently got into this one. 

Bandcamp
Last.fm

The Hotel Years - It Never Comes Out (2011)

Very emotional pop-punk from Mass. It gets a bit mushy here and there but is definitely a fine listen. The last three songs top the album off splendidly.


Bandcamp
Last.fm

Merchant Ships - For Cameron (2010)

Merchant Ships were a very influential and influenced screamo act that called it quits in 2010. 

"Dying" is probably the best track on For Cameron in my opinion but the mostly spoken word track, "Sleep Patterns" is definitely a stand-out all on its own.

Bandcamp

Last.fm