JAY SOM Announces Pirouette 7-inch out Jan 26 + Shares A-side

Jay Som - singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer Melina Duterte - released her breakout debut album Everybody Works last year. Since then, the album has received widespread critical acclaim, earning "Best of 2017" round-up nods from the likes of NPR Music, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, Billboard,Stereogum, Paste, Consequence of Sound, Entertainment Weekly, Esquire, SPIN, Newsweek, Exclaim!,Under The Radar and many more. Today Jay Som announces new material from the Everybody Workssessions: a 7-inch entitled Pirouette featuring brand new tracks "Pirouette" and "O.K., Meet Me Underwater." The 7-inch will be released digitally and on vinyl January 26th, but the title track can be heard now. Pre-order Pirouette HERE, see below for album art and listen to the A-Side HERE.

Jay Som on Pirouette:

"Both of these tracks were made during the spring of 2016 - the first demo stages for Everybody Works. They were fun to write and record but felt out of place on the track list during the finalization of the album. These tracks remain close to my heart and I'm really grateful they're finally out in the world."

Jay Som has more tour dates coming up, including a West Coast co-headline tour with Japanese Breakfast. See below to find a show near you, watch Jay Som's NPR Tiny Desk for a sneak peek of what to expect live, and get your tickets HERE.

Everybody Works, Jay Som's proper debut album which Duterte wrote, recorded, played and produced herself, is out now via Polyvinyl Records (N.A.)/Double Denim (EU/UK/Japan)/Inertia (AUS). Purchase it on vinyl, CD, cassette or digitally HERE.

Ed Shrader's Music Beat Announce Dan Deacon-Produced Record out 3/2 on Carpark, Share First Song + Video via Noisey

"they record vivid little tantrums that produce a whole lot of tension and foreboding from very elemental sounds..a visceral surprise every time." - Pitchfork

"this Charm City duo does postpunk the way Wire intended: As sparse, rudimentary, and ferocious as possible." -Stereogum

"It's truly refreshing to hear a band not fuck around and bring their formidable talent to the front of a record...irresistible, in-your-face post-punk" - SPIN

"Equal parts sonic chaos and minimal bliss...[Ed Schrader's Music Beat] masterfully blends mixed tempos and shock hooks in an unexpectedly visceral, enjoyable fashion." - Dazed

"go see Ed Schrader's Music Beat immediately - total surprise of the night." - Brooklyn Vegan

"Baltimore's Ed Schrader's Music Beat...waste little time in setting speakers ablaze with a fierce and breakneck post-punk juggernaut that's sure to blow an eardrum or two." - Consequence of Sound

Today Baltimore-based post-punk band Ed Schrader's Music Beat announce their third full-length record and their Carpark Records debut entitled Riddles. Band members Ed Schrader and Devlin Rice met nearly a decade ago while performing in separate acts on the legendary 2008 Baltimore Round Robin tour, which also included Beach House and Future Islands and was curated by Dan Deacon. Fast forward 10 years, fellow Baltimore-based artist Dan Deacon has produced, arranged and co-written Ed Schrader's Music Beat's forthcoming record that broadens their sonic palette and explores the possibilities of the art-rock and alt-rock genres. Riddles comes out March 2nd - pre-order the album at Carpark or on iTunes, and pre-save the album on Spotify. Some pre-order bundles include Ed Schrader's Music Beans, bags of coffee roasted by ESMB's resident coffee connoisseur Devlin. Album art, track listing, and more info on Ed Schrader's Music Beans below.

"Dunce" is the visceral, hard-hitting first single off of Riddles. Ed, Devlin and Dan caught up with Noisey to tell them more about the song, its cinematic music video and the new record. Listen to the new song, check out the video and get the scoop on Riddles HERE.

Ed Schrader's Music Beat will take Riddles out on the road this Spring - see below to find a show near you, and get your tickets HERE.

Ed Schrader's Music Beat needed to make this record. Nineteen tours in the U.S. since the Baltimore-based duo's formation in 2010, from headlining underground spaces to opening massive venues for Future Islands, had left vocalist Ed and bassist Devlin Rice exhausted - and hungry to take their music to the next level. ESMB originally worked in a maximalist drums, bass, and vocals mode, releasing the noise-rock full-lengths Jazz Mind (Load Records, 2012), and Party Jail (Infinity Cat Recordings, 2014). However, Ed and Devlin dreamed of a fuller sound - layered, breathing arrangements their early rapid-fire compositions always seemed to imply, without yet having the tools to realize. On Riddles, their first release for Carpark, the Music Beat begins their new life.

In search of a fresh direction, Ed and Devlin invited their close friend, electronic-pop maestro Dan Deacon, to expand their sound and experiment with them as the album's producer, arranger, and co-writer. Working steadily in Dan's studio for two years in total collaboration, three evolving musicians pushed through an intense period of personal tumult and found purpose in the sounds they were committing to record. The result: a polished and passionate masterpiece of nuanced alt-rock. From driving opening track "Dunce" and the soaring single "Riddles" to the disarmingly gorgeous closer "Culebra," Ed and Devlin unapologetically channel their personal pantheon of pop and rock gods while growing into the band - and people - they'd previously kept caged inside.

Dan, Ed, and Devlin all poured emotions produced by major life changes into these sessions. While in Puerto Rico on a rare vacation, Ed learned of the death of his stepfather, a charismatic but abusive figure who'd cast a dominant shadow on his formative years (feelings explored on the elegant "Tom," and crucial to the flow of the album). Devlin sat at the bedside of his brother, who'd long lived with a terminal illness, as he saw through his choice to die with dignity. And Dan's longest relationship, which had stretched across his entire career as a musician thus far, came to an end. "I looked forward to these sessions when everything else in life was a shit-show," recalls Devlin, who began the record commuting from Providence to Baltimore, but moved into Dan's studio as it neared completion.

"For me, the album parallels feelings of confronting the past, resolving it, facing the music, and blasting out of it," says Ed. "It's the album our hearts wanted us to make." Riddles is a full-length collaboration between Ed Schrader's Music Beat and Dan Deacon. All three people invested their souls into this record for two full years, and it shows.

Info on Ed Schrader's Music Beans:

"Throughout the process of writing and recording Riddles, coffee was the source of our focus and creativity. Every session would start with a pot, immediately followed by brewing a backup pot...both of which would vanish shortly after it was made. We decided to had to share our recording process muse with you. Ed Schrader's MUSIC BEANS are roasted and packaged by the band at Thread Coffee in Baltimore MD. Devlin has been roasting coffee for 13 years and Ed was practically born with a mug in his hand, so we are confident that Ed Schrader's MUSIC BEANS will be a joy to anyone who loves coffee. Thank you for your support!" - Ed and Devlin

Gaz Coombes Announces New Album 'World's Strongest Man', Shares New Track "Deep Pockets" | 'World's Strongest Man' out May 4th via Hot Fruit / Caroline International

“I’m a little mashed up/I’m the world’s strongest man...”

World’s Strongest Man is the magnificent third solo album by Gaz Coombes. Inspired variously by Grayson Perry’s autobiography “The Descent of Man”, Frank Ocean’s Blonde, Californian weed, British woodlands, unchecked masculinity, Neu!, and hip hop (and a whole lot more besides) -- a remarkable collection of eleven deeply personal songs each set to expansive, addictive melodies. From the deep soul purge of the title track to the coruscating Fripp-goes-motorik sprint of “Deep Pockets” via the gorgeous cyclonic ballad “Slow Motion Life” and the raw-as-hell stream of consciousness panic attack of “Vanishing Act”, World’s Strongest Man is a bold, ambitious, free-thinking, future-facing rock‘n’roll record.

World’s Strongest Man is the follow up to 2015’s critically acclaimed Matador – a record pretty much conceived, recorded and mixed in the studio equivalent of solitary confinement. Following its release, Gaz evolved from “Former Supergrass Frontman” to hugely respected Mercury Prize nominated solo artist in the space of just ten months. That album spawned five singles, was described by Q Magazine as “his masterpiece” and labeled an “instant classic” and awarded 5/5 stars by MOJO Magazine. Like Matador,World’s Strongest Man was written, recorded and produced by Gaz Coombes at his home studio and at Oxford’s Courtyard Studios (with co-production from long time studio partner Ian Davenport in a working process Gaz compares to what it must be like “editing a novel”).
The first track from World’s Strongest Man – “Deep Pockets” – is out now and available to stream and purchase here. Worlds Strongest Man will be released May 4, 2018 via Gaz's Hot Fruit label through Caroline International.

Pre-Order Gaz Coombes - World's Strongest Man Now: https://gazcoombesuk.lnk.to/WSMPRPR
Gaz Coombes - World’s Strongest Man
[May 4, 2018 - Hot Fruit / Caroline International]

Tracklist:
1. World's Strongest Man
2.Deep Pockets
3. Walk The Walk
4. Shit (I’ve Done It Again) 
5. Slow Motion Life
6. Wounded Egos
7. Oxygen Mask
8. In Waves
9. The Oaks
10. Vanishing Act
11. Weird Dreams

The Broad Presents US Debut of New Piece by Ron Athey & Sean Griffen at Vibiana in LA Jan. 25

 Later this month The Broad will present a new collaborative work by performance artist Ron Athey and composer Sean Griffin titled Gifts of the Spirit: Prophecy, Automatism and Discernment. It will be presented twice at Vibiana in Downtown LA the night of January 25th, and the performances will be the piece’s US debut. The performance is presented as a coda to the recent exhibition of Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirrors, and explores similar concepts of self obliteration and infinity.

“I made an extreme turning fifty performance, which was both in line with, and against, Kusama's Self-Obliteration concept. Rather than the erasure of oneself, the gesture is also grand: erasing the singular emphasis and using infinity as a texture. ‘Gifts of the Spirit’ takes that nugget further: expanding the ‘I’ of my memoir into the randomness of collectively authored text, set with the bloat of an opera.”—Ron Athey

Gifts of the Spirit: Prophecy, Automatism and Discernment is Ron Athey’s vision for an “automatic writing machine,” brought to life in collaboration with the composer Sean Griffin as a performance/installation made up of 16 writers, six typists, a hypnotist, vocalists and musicians. In this work, the artist "completes" his memoir (“Gifts of the Spirit”) together in ecstatic communion with his collaborators. This living machine makes a tightly choreographed and scored visual spectacle bringing together writing, reading and listening into a layered performative action resulting in a collectively authored text and sound score.

Athey has been writing his memoir since 1980 when he moved away from the Pentecostal and Spiritualist practices in which he was raised. His writing describes the experience of having been raised as a living saint within an environment of abuse, vibrating with the energy of the otherworldly, and living without the faith. The deconsecrated cathedral of St. Vibiana provides the perfect venue for this work which strips faith from ritual and presents the orchestration of ecstatic states as process-based art.

Gifts of the Spirit is co-produced by VOLUME, and has been made possible in-part by a grant from the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts. Guest-curated for VOLUME by Jennifer Doyle.

Tickets available: https://thebroad.org/programs/gifts-spirit-prophecy-automatism-and-discernment

Date: January 25, 2018

Times: 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. 

Location: Vibiana, 214 S. Main Street, Los Angeles, CA, 90012
Ticket price: $25 (on sale November 15, 2017 at thebroad.org/programs)

About Ron Athey

Los Angeles-based artist Ron Athey has been working at the vanguard of performance art for 25 years. Self-taught, his work developed out of post-punk/pre-goth scenes, and begins with Premature Ejaculation (PE), an early 1980s collaboration with Rozz Williams. Their approach to performance art was informed by the club actions of Johanna Went and the formulation of Industrial Culture (the idea of psycho/neuro acoustics in sound performance). Athey's work often experiments with performing in a trance state, not unlike the Pentecostal spirit states he attained in his childhood religious experiences. In the 1990s, Athey formed a company of performers and made Torture Trilogy, a series of works that addressed the AIDS pandemic directly through memorializing and philosophical reflection. This work is characterized by the physical intensity of 1970s body-art canon (e.g. COUM Transmission, Carolee Schneeman and the Viennese Actionists). These performances toured internationally. The trilogy's final chapter, Deliverance, was an Arts Council England commission and premiered at the ICA London. In the 2000s, Athey developed genre-stretching theatrical works like Joyce and The Judas Cradle, and a series of major solo performances such as The Solar Anus (which draws its name and spirit from a Georges Bataille essay, and from the action photographs of Pierre Molinier), Sebastiane (which plays with martyrology), Self-Obliteration Solo andIncorruptible Flesh (a series of solo performance that reflect on Athey's collaborations with the late Lawrence Steger). With this new series, Gifts of the Spirit, Athey returns to his Pentecostal roots and expands his practice into performance anchored not by the artist's body, but in his spirit.

About Sean Griffin

Sean Griffin lives and works in Los Angeles. Encompassing many languages, styles, media and forms, Griffin's unique compositional works rely on interdisciplinary incongruities positioned at the intersection of sound, image, performance and the archive. His works manifest as music, large and small-scale operas, collaborative installations, complex numeric choreographies and historically weighted musical/performance works. His works have been commissioned and presented internationally by venues including REDCAT, the Hammer Museum and LACMA in Los Angeles; June in Buffalo; Volksbühne in Berlin; Secession Vienna in Vienna; Royal Academy and the Tate Modern in London; Festival d'Avignon; Taipei City Arts Festival in Taipei City; Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; Centre Pompidou in Paris; Festival BOM 2010 in Seoul; and EMPAC, The Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center in Troy, New York. He received an MFA from CalArts and a Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego. He studied with Mel Powell, ChayaCzernowin and George Lewis. 

About VOLUME

VOLUME is a Los Angeles collective dedicated to presenting time-based work by emerging and established artists engaged in sound-based practices. Through performances, concerts, exhibitions, screenings and workshops, VOLUME fosters a critical understanding of politics and aesthetics in relation to sound and sound-based practices. 

About The Broad

The Broad is a contemporary art museum founded by philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad on Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles. Designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Gensler, the museum offers free general admission. The Broad is home to the 2,000 works of art in the Broad collection, which is among the most prominent holdings of postwar and contemporary art worldwide, and presents an active program of rotating temporary exhibitions and innovative audience engagement. The 120,000-square-foot building features two floors of gallery space and is the headquarters of The Broad Art Foundation’s worldwide lending library, which has actively loaned collection works to museums around the world since 1984. Since opening in September 2015, The Broad has welcomed more than 1.5 million visitors.

For more information on The Broad and to sign up for updates, please visit thebroad.org.

SOCCER MOMMY Announces Debut Album out 3/, Shares New Single + Video via NPR's Songs We Love

"Sophie Allison's songs are generously tender, pushing and pulling between preternatural composure and emotional disintegration." - New York Times

"as she makes this empowering demand for respect [on 'Your Dog'], Sophie Allison firmly establishes herself as a vital musical voice we'll be turning to in the years to come." - NPR Music

"If [Collection is] a sign of what's to come, it's an exciting one." - Pitchfork

"Her music, which fits in nicely with the contemporary Bandcamp-rock underground, is hinged on the anxious intimacy of someone who has been up all night, thinking about love." - The FADER

"The music is delightfully intimate. Her looping guitar drives things forward, but at her own pace. The songs are spare, candid, enchantingly direct... There is a quiet sureness here that is a tantalizing look at the places Allison might take her music." - New York Magazine's Vulture

"With her nostalgic pop sensibility, Soccer Mommy makes her songs feel intimate as she explores lost love, crushes and growing up." - Billboard
"everything she's put out has been consistently rewarding and uniformly excellent. It's hard to write the kind of music that she does with such skill - her songs are unassuming and simple on the surface, but deceptively complex." -Stereogum

"Soccer Mommy is a 20-year-old indie rock powerhouse." - NYLON

Today Soccer Mommy - twenty-year old Nashville native Sophie Allison - announces her debut album. Following a series of DIY Bandcamp recordings and last year's Collection, Clean is Allison's journey out of her bedroom and into the studio with a full band and an incredible record produced by Gabe Wax (War On Drugs, Deerhunter, Beirut) and mixed by Ali Chant (Perfume Genius, PJ Harvey). "I'd never made a full album before, just EPs and random tracks thrown together. I wanted it to be a lot more cohesive than the rest of the stuff that came before," explains Allison. "I wanted to make something that was a full piece of my life, that addressed similar themes and held together as a whole." The result is Clean, an album that presents Soccer Mommy as a singular artist, wise beyond her years, with an emotional authenticity of her own. Cleanwill be released on March 2nd via Fat Possum - pre-order the album HERE.

"I don't want to be your fucking dog," sings Allison on "Your Dog," the first single out today. Over knotty, distorted guitars and churning bass, she is equal turns confrontational and vulnerable. In the Weird Life-directed music video, what Allison describes as the song's 'soft anger' is perfectly captured. "The song comes from a feeling of being paralyzed in a relationship to the point where you feel like you are a pawn in someone else's world. The song and the video are meant to show someone breaking away and taking action, but at the same time, it's only a quick burst of motivation. It's a moment of strength amidst a long period of weakness."Listen to the song and watch the video now via NPR Music.

Soccer Mommy and her band are going on tour next month with Phoebe Bridgers - see below to find a show near you, and get your tickets HERE.

Sophie Allison got her start in the local Nashville DIY scene, going to shows and hanging out with other musicians, though she kept her own songwriting secret. "I've played music since I was six," says Allison, "and I always wrote songs just for myself. I did it for fun, posting songs on Tumblr, Bandcamp, andSoundcloud. I didn't think anyone would notice." All that changed the summer before Allison left for college at New York University. She bought a Tascam digital recorder and began to experiment with production, pushing the quality and craft of her songs to new heights.

Allison decided to start releasing her songs for free on Bandcamp under the name Soccer Mommy in 2015. A buzz began to grow, leading to live shows, a record deal, and 2017's critically acclaimed bedroom-recorded compilation Collection. "I realized that I could do this full-time," says Allison. "It was either quit school now and do it, or stop growing as an artist. It was now or never." So Allison took the plunge. She quit school, moved back home to Nashville, shifting all her focus to music. She toured with Mitski, Jay Som, Slowdive, The Drums, and more with no signs of slowing down.

The higher production values Soccer Mommy chose to incorporate on this record play to Allison's strengths, highlighting the maturity and growth of her songwriting. The music gains clarity and power, losing none of the trademark intimacy of her Bandcamp work, something Allison credits to days spent recording in Wax'shome studio. "It still felt do-it-yourself," she says. "It was like being in a nicer bedroom, with better quality stuff. It was a natural progression. I'd always wanted my music to sound this way, I just didn't have the means before."

Clean is an emotional album, heavy on themes of growth, isolation, and change, but balanced by a lightness of touch, and with hooks to spare. "Still Clean" is a stunner of an opening track, with the signature warmth of Allison's voice coupled with one of her best refrains. Her growth as a lyricist is most evident on "Cool", a sharply observed character study describing an aloof stoner girl, so cool and untouchable, and the agony she inflicts on her boyfriend. "Flaw," a melancholy ode to lovesick self-loathing that finds ecstasy in sadness, is the comedown from a song like "Cool." "Scorpio Rising" crystallizes these themes of identity, jealousy, and the desire to be someone else. Clean - the cohesive record Allison dreamt of making - is a true step forward, a strong and mature album from an artist just coming into her power.

Tracklisting:

1. Still Clean
2. Cool
3. Your Dog
4. Flaw
5. Blossom (Waiting All My time)
6. Last Girl
7. Skin
8. Scorpio Rising
9. Interlude
10. Wildflowers

Tour dates:

1/12/18 - London, UK @ The Lexington for Five Day Forecast @ *SOLD OUT*

2/3/18 - Orange County, CA @ Constellation Room #

2/5/18 - San Diego, CA @ Soda Bar #

2/6/18 - Tucson, AZ @ 191 Toole #

2/8/18 - Dallas, TX @ Three Links #

2/9/18 - Houston, TX @ White Oak Upstairs #

2/10/18 - Austin, TX @ Antone's #

2/12/18 - Birmingham, AL @ Syndicate Lounge #    

2/14/18 - Nashville, TV @ High Watt #

2/15/18 - Atlanta, GA @ Aisle 5 #

2/16/18 - Asheville, NC @ The Mothlight #

2/20/18 - Washington, DC @ Rock & Roll Hotel #

2/21/18 - Philadelphia, PA @ World Cafe Upstairs #

2/22/18 - Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg #

2/23/18 - Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg #

2/24/18 - Boston, MA @ Great Scott #

3/2/18 - London, UK @ Rough Trade East

3/3/18 - Leeds, UK @ Headrow House

3/4/18 - Manchester, UK @ The Castle Hotel

3/6/18 - London, UK @ Moth Club

3/7/18 - Brighton, UK @ The Hope

3/8/18 - Paris, FR @ Supersonic

3/9/18 - Amsterdam, NL @ Sugar Factory
3/12-18/18 - Austin, TX @ SXSW

@ with Snail Mail

# with Phoebe Bridgers