Even voorstellen – Crumb – Amama op 14 juni 2024
Crumb "AMAMA" 14/06 (crumb records/konkurrent)

“AMAMA” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUk9vYUc-9w

New York psych-pop band Crumb return with AMAMA, their most carefree and open-hearted album to date. A soundscape full of playful and patchwork experimentation — glitchy pitch-shifted vocals, cell phone recordings, nautical blips, sax mouthpiece solos, blasted drum samples, and piano strings dampened with Silly Putty — AMAMA continues to deepen the band’s hypnotic sound in a cohesive line back through 2021’s Ice Melt, 2019’s Jinx, and breakout EPs Locket and Crumb. Without a doubt, AMAMA is Crumb — singer and multi-instrumentalist Lila Ramani, keyboardist and saxophonist Bri Aronow, bassist Jesse Brotter, and drummer Jonathan Gilad — at their most animated. 

Buoyed by Ramani’s songwriting, at turns poetically abstract and directly confessional, AMAMA culls the strange encounters from Crumb’s touring years, tracing the dizzying path of a group that’s been in movement for nearly a decade. “Crushxd” is an ecstatic requiem for a turtle flattened under the tires of a tour van; “(Alone in) Brussels” finds Ramani in forced isolation in a distant city. On “The Bug,” we’re at a pit stop in a seedy motel, where a critter’s bite leaves a nagging feeling: “It’s always on my mind / it’s just always on my mind,” Ramani repeats over a creeping groove as she wanders the place at night. On “Side by Side,” perhaps the most candid track on AMAMA, frenetic percussion and disorienting, layered synth envelop Ramani as she considers the personal sacrifices she’s made along the way. 

Even as it explores transient stops and fraught encounters, AMAMA features some of Crumb’s most vulnerable, tender searches for organic connection. “Home is what I want and what I need,” Ramani sings on the clear-sighted opener, “From Outside a Window Sill”—which samples a police radio scan about a flock of geese crossing a bridge in Gowanus, Brooklyn, where Ramani grew up. The title track, “AMAMA,” is an upbeat and hopeful homage to Ramani’s grandmother, her namesake, who sings in Malayalam in the opening sample. The two voices, Lila’s and Leela’s, separated by language and place, intertwine as if on a spotty long-distance call in what is the most direct love song of Crumb’s repertoire. On the album’s closer, “XXX,” laden with distorted, industrial sounds, we finally find respite—a house shared between two lovers, a safe place. In the last moments, Ramani asks: “Isn’t this as good as it can get?”

AMAMA exists at the crossroads of psychedelia, pop, jazz, and rock, and cements Crumb as a band uniquely their own. Released independently on Crumb Records and produced alongside Johnscott Sanford and Jonathan Rado in Los Angeles, AMAMA is an incandescent statement about searching for solid ground, connection, and clarity in a life 

“AMAMA is dedicated to my namesake, my grandmother, whose voice is sampled throughout the song. A video sent to me over WhatsApp of her singing originally inspired the melody and ethos of the song, from which I built its glitchy, warped foundation. It’s a love song! My partner and Crumb's creative director [Abraham El Makawy] directed the video, which combines his family's archival footage of the neighborhood we grew up in, home videos from the band, as well as drawings from 702 fans who helped us animate the last part of the video. The song is the title track and spiritual center of our new album.”

BIFFF - Premières troef op programma van 42ste editie van het BIFFF, van 9 tot 21 april in Paleis 10, Brussel

Het programma voor het 42e BIFFF is net van de pers gerold, en het is er geen van de minste. Er staan 72 langspeelfilms op het menu, waaronder 4 wereldpremières, 10 internationale premières, 9 Europese premières en 39 Belgische premières. Er is een focus op FRENCH CONNECTION(S), een grindhouse-avondje met de vertoningen van KRAZY HOUSE, THE BELGIAN WAVE én THE TOXIC AVENGER uit 1984 om de 50e verjaardag van TROMA te vieren, gratis concerten, duivels entertainment, een BORN AFTER... MATRIX-dag waar alle films gratis zijn voor jongeren onder de 26, een family day met wel zes fantastische films voor jonge BIFFF'ers... En natuurlijk langverwachte films zoals openingsfilm CIVIL WAR van Alex Garland, ABIGAIL van Matt Bettinelli-Olpin en LOVE LIES BLEEDING van Rose Glass met Kristin Stewart en Katy M. O'Brian!

Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival - BIFFF

Even voorstellen – Pond – Stung
POND ANNOUNCE NEW ALBUM STUNG!, OUT JUNE 21 VIA SPINNING TOP RECORDS

NEW SINGLE “(I’M) STUNG” POND - (I'm) Stung (Official Video) (youtube.com)

06/10 La Grand Salon, Botanique - Brussels, BE

Prolific and beloved psychedelic rock band Pond has today announced Stung! which will be released June 21, 2024 via Spinning Top Records. The announcement of the Perth band’s tenth album arrives alongside new single “(I’m) Stung,”

“I wrote most of this while mowing someone’s lawn. I went home and put my fingers on the piano and pretty much played the base of it first go. This is a very rare and special treat and buoyed me for weeks. It’s funny because I had a mad crush on someone, and they dropped me like a sack of shit and this song just flew down and clocked me right in the forehead and I felt totally better. Then Gin and Gum added all their magic - cool sounds, passing chords..

It's about being totally pathetically stung by someone and just having to be cool with it being unrequited. Being resilient, accepting that you are a bit of a goose, but life goes on.”

‘(I’m) Stung’ arrives alongside a video shot in Western Australia by Chris Adams. “We went to Lancelin, one of the most stereotypically Western Australian looking places in Western Australia, armed with a super 8 camera, 12 tubes of silver body paint and a rock eisteddfod wardrobe,” Pond say of the visualiser. “Nothing but the blistering heat and dehydration and a battalion of legendary holidaymakers in ATVs stood between us and cinema history. Our friend Chris Adams also put on his little “filmic auteur” cap and carried our shit around while we cavorted among the dunes dressed like a knock off NSYNC. Omg and the bee!! The bee obviously makes it. Nick kind of lost his mind in the endless whiteness and started fearfully battling the beast in the sky. Probably all the paint fumes.

The last four Pond albums have been showcases of tidiness and brevity, 10 ideas always tucked into 40 minutes or so. But on Stung!, they gleefully, madly, and willfully lean into double-LP largesse, tapping the spirit of Tusk and Sign ‘O’ the Times by funneling 14 songs into the most unfettered and splendid hour of their recording career. A band for the better part of two decades, Pond has accepted (with no small joy or relief) that they are no longer beholden to shifting expectations of cool. That idea has empowered them, allowing them to play precisely what they want, to not move toward any goal but being themselves.

It takes more effort for Pond to make a record these days—not musically, of course, but logistically. They’re all adults with relationships, children, professions, hobbies, side-projects, or some mix of them all. (To wit, Allbrook and Jay Watson, or GUM, both released solo albums last year.) They began making Stung! in piecemeal fashion, then, a member or two showing up at the little studio in Watson’s back yard to work on a new idea. They’d tinker joyously and endlessly in Watson’s little workshop, trying a panoply of machines and widgets to get the most interesting sounds. What’s more, they were able to let the songs they had sit over time, so that Pond’s deeply democratic process could not only siphon and improve the best ones but also tease out what they might be missing for this very full double-record.

At last, they realised they ran the risk of being stuck in this phase—creation, adjustment, addition—forever. The whole quintet decamped to Dunsborough, the scenic surfing hub on Australia’s southwestern coast where a friend had recently finished a spacious and state-of-the-art studio. Allbrook would run near the shore each morning. They’d all swim during the day, then record until deep in the night. They left most of their ancillary gear at home, forcing them to drill down on the songs, ideas, and sounds they already had, to make them better without getting carried away in endless possibility. After all, after nearly a year of writing and workshopping, they had plenty of material, the makings of a set more expansive than any previous Pond album.

The title Stung! began as a joke in Pond, a reference to having a crush on someone or something that they began to use so often they simply had to make it the name. They still laugh when they hear it now, a silly inside wisecrack suddenly open to the outside world. But it’s kind of a credo, too: despite the bruises, the callousness, and the suffering, they remain stung with music, with the idea of making songs that feel just so and doing it together, as friends. And they are stung with the world, too, even when it bites back. “Well, I’m stung/the bells been rung,” Allbrook sings during the winning title track. “If love’s a game, then I guess you won.” Ten albums in, though, Pond seems to be having more fun playing now than ever before.

Following a run of dates in Australia with Queens of the Stone Age this winter and a run of US shows in the spring, Pond’s world tour will arrive in Europe in September. The band will stop in eight UK cities including London, where they headline the distinguished Scala on 3rd October.  

Even voorstellen - Jessica Pratt, album ‘Here in the Pitch’

Jessica Pratt, album ‘Here in the Pitch’ - 03/05 (city slang/konkurrent)

“Life Is” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaXe9zAa3r4&list=PLpA2tIG0tLywkbDAODN8vBtOpc5ifAx5x
Mon. June 3 - Brussels, BE @ AB Theater

Jessica Pratt announces her fourth album, Here in the Pitch, out May 3rd via City Slang, and releases the lead single/video, “Life Is.” Additionally, Pratt announces a tour this spring and summer throughout Europe, UK and the USA. Over the last 12 years, the revered Los Angeles artist has become one of the most singular songwriters of her generation, largely through the mystical, elusive blend of just her delicate acoustic guitar and breathtaking vocals. Here in the Pitch, however, is a very different kind of album from Pratt and features some of her most adventurous music yet. She envisioned a more expansive set of influences—“big panoramic sounds that make you think of the ocean and California”— and throughout these nine songs, timpani, glockenspiel, baritone saxophone, and flute are layered alongside robust vocal arrangements that create a triumphant mood, even when the lyrics hint at devastation.

This broader production palette is immediately apparent on the haunting album opener and first single, “Life Is.” A percussion roll nods to the grand, orchestral style of ’60s pop hits like the Walker Brothers’ “The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore.” “In a way, it’s kind of a false flag,” Pratt admits of this widescreen introduction to the album, considering the rest of the record is just as emotionally intimate and stark as fans have come to expect. “But I also feel like it’s a statement of intention.” Meanwhile, the lyrics are an impressionistic paean to the vagaries of ambition. “Life came and went and you didn’t land where you thought you would,” Pratt says of the song. “It’s the third act and you’re trying to climb back on the horse before it gets dark.” The mesmerizing video, co-directed by Colby Droscher and Pratt, was shot around New York City in late 2023 and looks to films of Kenneth Anger and Stan Brakhage for inspiration.

Five years after her 2019 breakthrough album Quiet Signs, Pratt has re-emerged with new ambition and new parameters for what her music can be. Working once again at Gary’s Electric Studio in Brooklyn with her trusted collaborators — multi-instrumentalist/engineer Al Carlson and keyboardist Matt McDermott — Pratt enlisted the rhythm duo of bassist Spencer Zahn and percussionist Mauro Refosco (David Byrne, Atoms for Peace) to help realize her vision, alongside contributions from Ryley Walker, Peter Mudge (Mac Miller, Kendrick Lamar), and Alex Goldberg.

If Pratt’s early albums—2012’s word-of-mouth favorite Jessica Pratt and 2015’s devastatingly beautiful On Your Own Love Again—seemed beamed in from a dimly lit bedroom somewhere in the distant past, these songs stand on more solid ground. The tone can range from comforting and even chipper (“When you’ve fallen out, get both feet on the ground,” she reassures during the chiming chorus of “Life Is”) to a malevolent quality that feels entirely new in her songbook.

“I became obsessed with figures emblematic of the dark side of the Californian dream while making this record,” Pratt explains, noting the influence of Los Angeles’ strange, seedy history and the bleak end of the hippy era. You can hear this playfully villainous perspective emerging in her imagistic lyrics, although the clearest shift is in her vocal performance. While Pratt admits to always seeking inspiration from voices that sound like they’ve been “drug through life,” she worked on these songs to develop a fuller, more physical style that draws from the dignified baritone of Scott Walker and the weathered theatrics of latter-day Judy Garland.

If a sense of hope is clear in Pratt’s words, it’s even clearer in her performance: placing her voice at the forefront and creating an emotional immediacy that sets this record apart from all her past work. “I never wanted it to take this long. I’m just a real perfectionist,” she explains of the album’s long gestation, which spanned from summer 2020 to the spring of 2023. “I was just trying to get the right feeling, and it takes a long time to do that.” With Here in the Pitch, Pratt comes as close as she ever has to this feeling of perfection, to music you can reach out and touch in the air around you, to summoning with every note the hope and mystery, the horror and romance, that lingers within the silence. Through these songs, she suggests those qualities are precisely what keeps us listening, over and over again, on the edge of our seats.

Here in the Pitch Tracklist

1. Life Is
2. Better Hate
3. World on a String
4. Get Your Head Out
5. By Hook or by Crook
6. Nowhere It Was
7. Empires Never Know
8. Glances
9. The Last Year