To who it may concern,

New trash punkers, VHS, will fill up yer ever lovin’ head with their particular design of garage snot. A gross amalgamation of; florescent vocals from basement realms, hard biting lyrical solos, noisy anthems floating high above the fray, and steel guitar strings sawing through glass (which has never been quite so euphonious), all wrapped up in the magnetic world of VHS. For reference think early Cribs, Wipers, or the late Jay Reatard (RIP). You still ridin’ homie? …aces! Then stumble your ass down to the Crocodile on the 7th of July and give this now freshly toured squad a what up! They join post-rockers Trans Am and Midday Veil to burn it down. New EP “Chocking on the Fruit” released late last month, HAVE A HEAR.

–Shane O’Gallagher

The streets are alive tonight with cacophonous bursts of jazzy cum and mangled Rock and Roll. A lonely neighborhood cool cat starts off the jam with a scratchy guitar, while a homeless dog plays the honky-tonk piano with a percussive fervor. Trash can fire vocals (sparked by the Mael brothers) howl at the moon, and soon a small audience of stoned Rock and Roll addicts surround the fire while Crazy Eyes feed it with their bludgeoning R’n’B stomp. With enough hooky noise and jumble jangle rhythms to hold up a small convenience store, Crazy Eyes toss swagger thoughtfully throughout the street; sometimes they throw in a pretty little ditty too, shedding sarcasm and spreading goo all over the city wherever they may go. While all the denizens of trash city chime in on the choruses and ring in the new era of grimy rock and roll prosperity.

Heatwarmer have found an incredible recipe that involves one part Canterbury scene, one part Thrill jockey Records, and two parts Christopher Cross; mixed together and then tossed into Bob James’ oven for a hot minute. The final product is this amazingly dense, multi tiered, and progressive cake that is as sweet as it is heavy. Your tastes buds might not even realize all of the tiny orchestrations, and calculated cadences that go into a cake like this, yet they will be pleased to consume it and probably won’t even think twice about what the ingredients are. But if you are the inquisitive type and choose to dive face first into this cake, then be prepared for a wild journey through jazz hominy, heavy cream, and soft cheeses, as you attempt to make sense out of disparate elements that should be enjoyed as a whole.

If Heatwarmer is cake, then Spyn Reset would definitely be the video game at your 8 year old birthday-party-sleepover. This Electro-prog-gamecore band breezes through groovy workouts in odd time signatures, conjuring the sounds of Medeski, Scofield, Martin and Wood as if fronted by Daft Punk, all while covering the Contra theme song. Though mostly instrumental the occasional vocoder chimes in to let you know that you’re about to enter the boss’ lair… But don’t worry! Armed with laser synthesizers, shredding guitars, and loaded drums, you are more than well equiped (even without using the cheat!) to face the Red Falcon at the end of the game and claim victory (and bragging rights) over all your friends.

Check out this prog-rock showdown at Barboza on May 21st featuring special guest Hildegard (feat. Cliff Hines) from NOLA.

This guy. Man, let me tell you, he knows what’s up. He’s usually heard your favorite Seattle band waaaay before you (and sometimes even before the band has even heard themselves) because he’s often the one recording them at the super duper BLDGs recording studio. So obviously it was only right to ask him to compile the jams that really get him stoked about the music here. Listen below for a definitive slice of Seattle that should be posted on the the Seattle wikipedia page because of how legit it is. Enjoy!

Hut on a High Peak – MTNS

Girl I Know – Mo Brown & The Shit Downtown

The Lake – Industrial Revelation

Truth or Justice – l’atomium

Take It Away – Red Ribbon

Supermoon (in Scorpio) – The Ghost Ease

Spy – Ubu Roi

B Squad – Sashay

Chop Down That Tree (Live) – So Pitted

Hamburger – The Dumps

Seed – The Fabulous Downey Brothers

Eli – Cabana

Get Out Of Love – Great Spiders

Woundlicker – Draemhouse

Same (Wrong) Words // Moments – SEACATS

Separator – CHARMS

The space between your eyes and your cerebellum; the weird spiraling flesh that juts out the sides of your head, the gateway to your nervous system, has just been filled by Coma Figura. What could be a more soothing intruder than the clean tones and soulful rasp of an Arthur Russell protégé, or the melodic honey drip from A Band of Bees Bee-side? Coma Figura have figured out how to keep it smooth in a Fleetwood Mac ‘Bare Trees’ kind of way, while maintaining the lyrical flips that will keep the listener on the edge of their seat.

You just found your mom’s mushroom hoard so naturally you steal them, because you don’t really want your mother to be doing mushrooms for fear that she’ll have a bad trip and make you clean your room, even though you’re 28 years old and she really has no authority over you anymore. So you ingest the dang things, choking them down all the way because they’ve been stored next to a bottle of patchouli, and you wait. In the meantime you put on Eric’s Trip and wonder why bands can’t be this good anymore.

All of the sudden you find yourself online, on shrooms, (because it’s 2015 and we don’t go outside anymore) and you start reading the Seattle Deli. You take one look at the banner at the top and you’re all like “who the fuck is Cabana?” So you take a chance and click through. Suddenly, you are sucked into this new ecosystem we’re calling bandcamp, where bands are kings, queens and denizens alike. Where musical theory is the only law and even it can be broken at any moment, and nationwide healthcare means listening binaural beats and a Shepard’s tone.

Meanwhile Eric’s Trip has stopped, but just as suddenly as you clicked through a new song begun -It’s not Eric’s Trip, nor is it the Smashing Pumpkins; it’s not Galaxie 500 either! Your eyes have become deaf and your ears are blind to anything other than this and you’ve become consumed by the new sound that surrounds you: Cabana! And what a glorious sound it is! The guitars are as fuzzy as they are clear, while the vocals make a child of the 90’s want to crawl back into the womb and be reborn so that they can hear those classic songs for the first time again. Thanks to Cabana though we don’t have to do that because they have taken us directly to the 90’s, passing through the Paisley Underground and picking up Jason Spaceman along the way, all while we sit comfortably at home drooling into our macbook retinas.

Blame it on the mushrooms, or blame it on technology, either way if you hadn’t been guided by voices you may have never discovered Cabana. So, thank you oh! Great deities of the Dream Syndicate, for you have guided mine ears to thine great auditory shelter from the coldness of the future of music: ALL HAIL CABANA.

Seattle’s cool-punk sage Julia Shapiro has put together an awesome mix-tape of some of Seattle’s finest pre-post-garage-fi-no-drone-outside-wavers. Listen closely and you might hear some of Chastity Belt’s subliminal influences shine through; from So Pitted’s grimy ‘Cure’ infection, to TacocaT’s fuzzy cat-call sarcasm. Or maybe don’t think about it too much and just kick out these jams and have a real cool Monday.

Hippy Shit – Pony Time

Hurt (Closer to P edit) – Punishment

Tell Me – S

I want To Believe – Lisa Prank

Hey Girl – TacocaT

Couches – Wimps

Deep Throat – Stickers

The Sickness – So Pitted

Sequins – VATS

Ghoul – Dude York

Seattle Bands from juliamshapiro on 8tracks Radio.

Red Ribbon immediately hits with a wave of uncontrollable nostalgia; jarring loose fragments of hazy post-rock idioms that coalesce with the feeling of Codeine rippling over your eardrums. ‘Whatever I can get’ is a melancholic pastiche of the crippling affliction of acquiescence, and while singer Emma Danner yields to what ever she can get, she also warns that “you’re going down with me,” an admonition that is as soothing as it is eerie. Musically, the spindly guitar recalls ‘Misery is a Butterfly’ era Blonde Redhead, while the rhythm draws inspiration from an anemic Land of Talk rapping on the door to your Memoryhouse.

Find yourself overcome with glowing euphoria tonight with Red Ribbon and more at Vermillion. 8PM. Free.

Magma Fest 2015 is here! For the entire month of March the wonderful people at Hollow Earth Radio will be throwing shows at multiple venues and non-venues alike, all of which are all ages. Last week we saw Chastity Belt play at a boxing ring next to a community garden in the Central District. This week on Friday, March 20th we are brought an exceptionally well curated event at The Cockpit (an unassuming little alleyway in the middle of Capitol Hill), featuring some of Seattle’s most known unknown…

While there are definite nods to prog-rock in Bod’s sound they ultimately replace quantity with quality, a trait that prog-rock has a hard time doing. Gigantor begins by fooling you into thinking that you accidentally put on the soundtrack to Labyrinth, which is immediately, yet so casually, tossed aside when the verse introduces an organ and drum machine duet reminiscent of Clinic. Cue the mellotron and… ladies and gentlemen, we are floating in space, but not for long; incomes a chorus that has us exclaiming YES In a roundabout way…

A gazebo is both a symbol of elegance, while simultaneously being an outpost for bums and teenagers to smoke spliffs in. It’s in the disparate parts where we find the charm of this strange but alluring structure. Similarly, Gazebos the band creates a whimsical mélange of sweet AND savory powerpop. Singer, Shannon Perry croons like Exene Cervenka singing Strange Fruit, while the band dangles the jangle of Television personalities and dance around power pop ballads in a pair Black Vinyl Shoes, in a way only R. Stevie Moore knows how to do. So naturally, it’s no surprise to see that the great R. Stevie and Gazebos have, in fact, collaborated.

Great Spiders is the pseudonym of a guy named Omar. We imagine Omar as a shy kid with a bowl cut who listens to Steeleye Span, and Brewer and Shipley and other 70’s AM radio gems, while daydreaming about one day when a real girl will ask him to dance. On ‘Get Out of Love’ exactly that happens, and Omar finds himself falling for a girl who listens to Slade and The New York Dolls. She is embodied by a riff so classic rock it ain’t funny, which throws Omar’s song legs akimbo and has him asking how to get out of love. It leaves him wishing for something more in between, something more casual, like hanging out down the street with big stars in the sky and not in our eyes.

Closing out the night will be Religious Girls (the only non-Seattle band of the evening who are as equally amazing as the Seattle bands) and are not to be missed!

Tear off your scabs at the Black Lodge tonight with PC Worship and Chubby Rhapsody or catch them on tour somewhere else: 

Birth and decay are both moments of abjection, wherein the subject is removed from the great mother and becomes conscious of a unique identity devoid of interference from cultural perceptions. The phenomenon is no magical circumstance, rather a self initiated exile into a world of infinite possibilities -a moment that generally evades our grasp. However, some are able to embrace this state of reality and become the uncanny abject of our heart’s desire.

Nightspace is Seattle’s very own destroyer of the super-ego; using synthesized sounds to distance themselves from the status quo of pop. Though, you may find something familiar in the four-on-the-floor kick drum, don’t let it fool you; Eurythmics did it too and they set themselves apart from the synth-pop of the 80’s with darkness and gravity much in the same way Nightspace also does so fluently. Rejecting themselves from the same school of industrial cold-wave as Cabaret Voltaire, Nightspace combines the sex and death of a slowed down Belgian Hardstyle DJ with Ian Curtis’ cavernous admonitions of a completely dejected reality, jutting out from the walls of deviance that seem to be closing in on them. Concurrently, looming and distorted synthesized lines weave in and out of Nightspace’s techno-terror with sincerity, conjuring fake memories of Demdike Stare covering the Suspira soundtrack, an occurrence that has not happened (though we wish it would).

The abjection that occurs from listening to Nightspace is a beautiful fracture of reality that all should be aware of. Whether you crave the horror of love or the placidity of death, hearing Nightspace will remove you from both and surly enhance you as a person and a listener. 

Rock n’roll has had many different iterations over the years, but in all its chameleon like stages it has maintained its sense of rebellion which made it so exciting, and scandalous, in the 50’s.  All that is required of a rock n’roll band is that essence of insolence regardless of whatever else you sprinkle in.

With Bad Motivators insolence comes in spades; loud guitars, sarcasm, pizza, with some occasional harmonies make up the dynamic quartet. On a song like ‘Too High’ Bad Motivators marry a good olde Chuck Berry riff with snotty lyrics that can’t even… Like, “I’m not even gonna bother talking to you because I just can’t.” Throw in a cool little surf shack organ vibe a la the B-52’s and you’ve nearly satiated yourself with a pretty cool laissez-faire punk song.

Check out these sarcastic, pizza loving rockers at The Lo-Fi tonight with Spirit Award, Lucy, and Gothic Tropic