Da Di Da hails from somewhere Dallas-way, but have migrated to our venue-laden shores to favor us with their crunchilicious flavor of alt-rock-punk.  And we’re winning on that deal – proof is in their latest EP, "The Crowbar Separation", an expertly-produced guitar/bass/drums juggernaut, pulsing with righteous punk riffs, highlighted with jazz-ish ballads, and sprinkled with a smattering of scat-like vox (and No, that’s not as in scatological, but as in singing – Get your mind out of the gutter). Don Denham’s vox raps and soars with punkish conviction; occasionally slipping past the mark, but, like Damon Albarn, eschewing auto-tune anyways; endearing us in the process.  Compositionally, these tracks dodge conventional chord progressions for deeper, more complex fare – Check out the title track for an immensely satisfying run; lyrically, chord-wise, and tempo-wise.  Great, ground-breaking stuff, and for a first-time out?  Da Di Da has our attention, ya’ll. 

We’re calling "The Crowbar Separation" an excellent release in the finest Austin indie tradition – yep, we claim ’em as our own now, thank you very much.  And at the moment, this one’s still a freebie on Bandcamp, lucky you, so snatch it up.

— Scott Osborn

Wasted Fangs is the kind of entity that can only spring up from ground that’s fertile with musical talent:  Two dudes (Nick Garrison and John Hetherington) take a break from their main band (the ever-popular Knifight) to generate their own excellent, uniquely-styled EP.

Knowing what you know, you’d expect the "Wasted Fangs EP" to be something along the 80-ish/synth-powered lines that Knifight is famous for.  Nope, these two have carved out their own sonic path; generating primarily acoustic-driven, shoe-gaze-ish numbers; some bearing a slightly-folksy feel ("When You Sleep"); some driving you to dance with their uniformly-excellent percs ("Smoke and Mirrors", "Slam Poetry 2k12").  But all these tracks bear riffs familiar enough to draw you in, melded into unique compositional shapes – all steering clear of typical ABA format – creating a brand new form that has all the ingredients you like, twisted and turned into something unknown, yet recognizable.  

Great freshman release, great addition to your iPod.  With a release this good, we’re curious as to just how involved (or not) their subconscious was in taking on the name "Wasted Fangs". 

–Scott Osborn

New Year’s Eve?  Plans?

Perennial local favorites The Sour Notes are throwing another one of their epic New Years Eve parties.  And Yeah, you’re invited to hang out with them, Deep Time, Hundred Visions, Pompeii, Love Inks, The Laughing, and Mirror Travel for a night of fun and frolic at Cheer Up Charlie’s.  Cool.

Meanwhile, over at Frontier Bar, Slacker Magazine is throwing a Blacklight Party with Ringo Deathstarr, JAPANTHER, The Boxing Lesson, Megafauna, Residual Kid, Mighty Mountain (Formerly PYRAMID), and The Sun Machine (Formerly THE SOUL PILOTS).

Stubb’s is bringing in the New Year with T-Bird and the Breaks + Henry + The Invisibles.

The Beauty Ballroom is hosting Grupo Fantasma and Foot Patrol.

Neon Indian is headlining at The Mohawk, warmed up by Silent Diane and S U R V I V E.

And ND’s NYE event includes Not In The Face, The Couch, The Sideshow Tragedy, and AC / ND.

Well, you have all day to decide.  And to get you prepped, mentally and emotionally, for that decision, Zooey and Joey are here for you.

ritchUAL, aka, ritchN (or, as it’s written on more official documents, Ritchard Napierkowski), has been a virtual fixture in the Austin music department for years, filling a variety of roles for a buncha different bands, sharing song-writing credits with tons of folks – A lot of the details, though not all, are worth the once-over, so check it out here.  

He’s a prolific artist, with another collection of instrumentals coming in just a few more days (1/1/13, "iamanotheryou").  But let’s push the Pause button and enjoy the just-out "diodes&diatribes", which is described thusly:  

17 collected works from 2003-2009 (i think) 

some of these have “grown up” into songs for other bands i’ve worked with (like subNatural, carbon theory and panjoma to name a few) while others remained in the neutral zone of my hard drive for years. 

These 17 tracks weight in at over an hour’s-worth of industrial-strength electronica, glitchy 8-bit aberrations, haunting ambient compositions, and pulsed through with delay-lined arpish electrocrunk, among other experimental efforts.  For a collected work composed over 6+ years, these numbers bear the consistent stamp of a battle-hardened electronica composer worth listening to.  Maybe to the artist this is just a loose collection of old songs, but we’re calling "diodes&diatribes" one of the better electronica releases of 2012.    

Sure, you’re gearing up for New Years Eve.  There’s a party or two to pick from (which we’ll go over, in detail, once The Day draws nigh).  

But that’s just one night.  After, comes FREE WEEK!  

And actually, that’s a misnomer – It’s really TWO WHOLE WEEKS worth of free music to enjoy.  Which means there are TWO WHOLE WEEKS of gigs to pick and choose from, at venues all over our fair city.  That’s a lot of deciding to do. 

But lucky us:  There are two sites (that we know about) to make the decision-making process easier:

The Sonic Vault Austin has a great, band-centric page for your perusal.

And as always, Do512 has the 411, broken out by venue and date.  

And if that’s not enough, there’s even a twitter feed devoted to Free Week.  Check it!

Amidst the holiday tussle and bustle, you mighta missed some of the gems pouring forth from the Austin audioscape.   So like yesterday’s wrapping paper, let’s try to square that away:

Wave Hands Like Clouds, "the collaborative efforts of Aaron Oberlin and Tyler Norton", has just popped out their third electronica/experimental full length LP and, like previous releases, this one veers amidst funky beats, 8-bit-wise melodies, bizarrely-splattered vox, strange chord patterns, and pads twisted into coolly-unrecognizable shapes.  Escewing pop format, this release has just 2 (virtually-unnamed) tracks, "Side A" and "Side B"; each 16+ minutes worth of LP-devotion-declaring, smooth-moving, expertly-composed movements in courageous experimental form.  

Right now, the only available (ownable) format is cassette tape.  You can still stream it though, and at this point, what better way to wash away the by-now-tired Christmas standards than a traipse through the excellently-produced experimental forms hand-built by Oberlin and Norton?  

-Scott Osborn

Certain that, like us, you’re deeply engrained in the bacchanalian traditions of the Christmas holidays, we thought it high time for a little juxtaposition, hence, Texas Microphone Massacre.  Though nothing quite says "Merry Christmas!" like a trio of masked, psychopathic-looking individuals with the word "Massacre" floating around in there, the music these guys generate is nothing short of mind-blowingly great, if in an occasionally-morbid way.  That, and their first release, "Fantasy Rolodex", composed and performed under the watchful eyes of Grammy-award-winning producer Tim Gerron, is still a freebie.  Get it yonder ways.  

Merry Christmas.

Speaking of free music – which, between sips of eggnog, we undoubtedly were – Teflon Beast is having a holiday sale.  And in this context, "sale" actually means FREE.  

Yep: Pick up some great jams from The Daily Brothers, Chris Daily, Gary Busdriver, Netherverse, and Himbert & Herbert: 

• Chris Daily’s Lately, As Always: Wayside Songs and Good Booty.
• Netherverse and Gary Busdriver’s Split!
• The Daily Brothers’ Long Live The Dream EP and The Dream is Dead.

So aim the sleigh towards Teflon and get ’em whilest you may.  And while you’re there picking up the freebies, be sure to pick up their Christmas collection, "Christmas with the Beast":

So the last day of the Mayan calendar has come upon us.  We should party like it’s the end of the world.  

Perhaps the most telling sign of the apocalypse is the Hipnautica reunion.  That’s going down at Rusty’s.

At Mohawk’s, we’ve got Hardproof Afrobeat, Money Chicha, and Butcher Bear DJ.

The Red Eyed Fly will welcome the destruction of all that we know with EBM, Drifter, Black Thorn Halo, Hazard Hounds, and Fight Plan.

Deciding to put a positive spin on total annihilation, the good folks at The Parish are having a Beginning of The World party with Nadis Warriors, Blockhead, DrFameus (Allen Aucoin of The Disco Biscuits) plus "Live Painters, Poetry Readings, Live Floral Arrangements, Reiki and Energy Healing, Crystal Healing, other healing modalities; and more!!"  What’s not to like?

The Beauty Ballroom is having Christmapocalypse with, oddly enough, Auto Body and Octopus Project DJ.  

Over at Holy Mountain, they’re just calling it a party with the Peligrosa 5 Year Anniversary party.  

At Frank, they’ll be taking a more somber approach with an Acoustic Night put on by Language Room, The Couch, and Dawn & Hawkes. 

The Dirty Dog will do it in metal, with Closed Hand Promise, Dead Earth Politics, Course of Ruin, Truman Syndrome, Immerse, and Abiotic.

While over at Red 7, they’ve calling it Party At The End of The World, and have managed to snag Assacre, Spiritual Wives, Visitors, Pack Of Wolves, Krum Bums, Employer, Employee, At All Cost, and Recover.

So get ye henceforth and enjoy the end of the world!

So with another week of Christmas standards left to endure and, if you’re like us, they’re starting to become wearisome.  It’s not too soon to want something new, Christmas-music-wise, is it?

Will "relatively new" do?  Released in ’10, Watch Out For Rocket‘s "13 Days of Christmas", like the holiday it professes to celebrate, stands the test of time, growing better with age.  A genre variety pack of 13 pop-rock numbers from the prolific David Thomas Jones, done up in lofi style for your season celebratory pleasure.  From the hard-rockin’ ("13 Days of Christmas", "Hey Now (Merry Christmas)", "Fly Reindeer Fly" ) to the jazz-ish ("Hey Mr. Snowman"), the psychedelic ("Eggnog N Incense"), the pop ("Drummer Girl", "Upsidedown Xmas Tree", "Merry Christmas Baby"), and even a touch of acoustic folk-ish ("Santa quit yer foolin’ around"); nothing says Holiday Cheer quite like this collection.  

Before you go out on that sleigh ride, snatch up your favorite holiday beverage and give "13 Days" a spin.

Just in time to chill out your frantic Christmas chores with throw-back classic, head-bobbing, 70-ish funk, BoomBaptist has whipped out the horrifically-titled "The Lost Files Vol. 4 (2007-2009)" LP.  Andrew Thaggard explains the "Vol. 4":  "It is the final volume of the four-part series that progresses through time up until the release of my beat tape in 2009."

It’s OK – we can indulge Mr. Thaggard’s unimaginative title.  ‘Cause this baby is filled to the brim with MPC-powered beats, adorned with keys, fueled by wicked bass lines, and blinged-up with the occasional random vox.  Though this collection does occasionally flail with repetitive flourishes, none of these tracks are 3 minutes long, so stick around:  The good funk wins in the end.  If nothing else, check out the excellent re-working of the Talking Head’s "Drugs" in track 10 ("B4 Numark Bought Akai & Everything Went To sh*t"), the dead-on, nailed-it Memphis-sounding "Seductress Duct Tape (Too Tough)", and the sweet-n-sour soulful "Coming out of retirement, again (MJ Theme)".

Vol. 5, anyone?

– Scott Osborn

Before they were The Gorgeous Hands, back when they bore the less-gorgeous-sounding moniker of The Magnificent Snails, these guys generated some well-formed, acidic, garage pop-rock (check out the Baby Acid Trips EP ).  Now they’ve put aside the stimulants and the Snail name, and have generated an irresistable pair of pop numbers for their latest 7-inch single.  Nicely harmonized vox over alt rock guitar licks, propelled along some tried-and-true chord progressions and highlighted by truly righteous riffs.  Two sides-worth of good stuff here.

This came out back in June, so you mighta missed it.  You’ve got a few minutes, see what gorgeous hands these snails have become.