What’s most interesting about Puerto Rico/NYC based band Fantasmes’ latest album “Redness Moon” is not necessarily the obvious, but rather what is happening “underneath.” “Cloud Prepositions” emerges through a slow, purposeful, rising groove. Droning background pulses underscore prominent tambourine percussion, tubular-belled guitars and eno-esque treated keyboards. The vocals are muted and obscure, creating mood over storytelling. The title track “Redness Moon” (video below) is more defined, with its driving drums and layered arpeggiated guitar chords. The tom toms rumble like beat keepers on 15th century warships, adding a tense quality to this already mysterious soundscape. “Play It Wrong” keeps the vocals just as vague, but adds a harsher electric guitar to the mix. Distant conversational vocals are just out of earshot, adding to the mysterious nature. This allows the percussion to move forward, sharing prime sonic real estate with aggressively struck guitar chords. “Dance in the Shadows” slows it down again, with gentle acoustic guitar leading the way. Vocal lyrics become clearer, with the line “I should be there” as a repeated refrain. “Passages” brings back the trippy drone, slow building guitar chords and masked spoken word vocals. It is beatless, but again trance-enducing and meditative. A clearly defined rhythm initially drives “Monsters’ Mother” until that too abruptly lurches into a Doors-like humming trance and erratic drum-centric passage. A third movement closes out the track via a fuller (but rhythmically different) driving, with moaned vocal amd guitar-flailing raveup. “Let it Repeat” presents the kind of twisted toy piano plings and chimes over ominous humming that you might hear in a horror movie. That half-a-minute contribution serves as a segway into “Today is Still.” Surprisingly the lyrics can be made out here with the line “there are days like these I’m sure I’m never coming home” setting the stage. Ancient Chinese bell percussion clang and ping over bright guitar picking, creating an atmospheric tour-de-force. – Dave Cromwell

REDNESS MOON – FANTASMES – (MUSIC FILM) from Last Bummer Records on Vimeo.

Wanna hear about split infinitives? How about the proper usage of "who" versus "whom"? Okay, maybe not. But this week we’ll be hearing from Appropriate Grammar‘s very own Steve Gardels. He tells us about his self-taught approach to drumming, his career with the Hopeless Destroyers, and the KCAI "fart box." Catch the beat right here!

On The Beat is a weekly interview brought to you by drummer Sergio Moreno (of Hillary Watts Riot and Alacartoona), and features some of the many talented drummers in the Kansas City area.

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Like everyone knows, hip-hop got its start by DJs continuously looping the hottest breaks of funk/R&B songs at house parties. So a space that was originally about 10 seconds would be stretched to three or four minutes.

I feel like Brooklyn based producer Derek VanScoten’s project – called just D.V.S. – with their new album ‘Coming Up For Air: Vol. 2 dawn‘, has done something similar with electronica. Active in the same musical playground of other groove-happy maximal groups like Ratatat or Fuckbuttons, D.V.S. expands on smaller loops, and builds worlds around these otherwise simple statement. Derek’s twangy, often sliding guitar is the glue that keeps the pieces of this musical universe together.

Album opener ‘The Bending Bloom’ for instance, orbits around a single hook for its four minutes, expanding and contracting for an organic series of turns as unique as it is engrossing. The band even ventures into R&B material the way Flying Lotus updates free jazz for the mobile generation. From their first record’s focus on dusk, to their latest LP’s meditations on dawn, D.V.S. is an exciting group that knows how to make good use of their sources. – Mike Levine (@Goldnuggets)

Interesting show at new Bushwick venue Delinquency on Saturday 08.11 with Chappo and Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt (which we covered here several times already) and It is rain in my face – a Brooklyn based project we never wrote about. This is a one man group that seems to be of two minds: On the one hand, songwriter/programmer Mat Jones’ material is molded from the tradition of Bread and Neil Young, but this AM rock sound is filtered through layers of electronic tinkering, vocal effects, and drum machines gone crazy. Like if James Blake got together with Thom Yorke and moved to Brooklyn. The project’s first EP is a lush journey of this folk-tronica. Songs like ‘Small Prayer’ and ‘Too Blue’ work as quiet meditations that unexpectedly erupt in breakbeats every so often, but touch back down to reveal the gentle humanity behind each of these carefully crafted numbers. Mat has new material which will see the light of a day in a debut full length scheduled for the fall – see preview track streaming below.. – Mike Levine (@Goldnuggets)

Congratulations to Spirit Is The Spirit, The Deli KC’s August artist of the month!

With lush arrangements, compelling rhythms and an indie pop accessibility, Lawrence group Spirit Is The Spirit has found wide success since its debut EP Mother Mountain, released back in early 2011. Since then, the band has signed with The Record Machine and has played at the Middle of The Map Festival twice. In May, the six-piece launched a successful Kickstarter campaign to acquire a van to tour around the country, and is currently putting together rewards for all of their supporters. They hope to begin recording a long anticipated full-length album in the fall.

Spirit Is The Spirit promises that its upcoming shows and music will only get better while the band explores more adventurous ideas in both live performance and writing. While Mother Mountain did not involve all six of the members in the process, the next album promises to involve each member in each step of the process.

Spirit Is The Spirit is:
Austen Malone
Noah Compo
Wayne Zimmerman
Josh Landau
Brook Partain
Danny Bowersox

And here’s the music video to the band’s song "Pillows," available on the 12" compilation Secret Handshakes, a collaboration between The Record Machine and Golden Sound Records.

–Michelle Bacon

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