ROUND-UP by Sufjan Stevens and Yarn/Wire

January 8th, 2015 , by

City planning, outer space, and now the rodeo: at the end of January Sufjan Stevens will perform what has become an ongoing series of multimedia performances premiering at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and incorporating collaborations with stellar performers and video artists into new classical compositions by Stevens himself.

His live electronics, along with percussion and piano duo Yarn/Wire, will be accompanied at the premiere of ROUND-UP by a new film shot Aaron and Alex Craig, at the BAM Harvey Theater from Jan. 20-25.

Previously, Sufjan Stevens collaborated with Bryce Dessner and Nico Muhly to compose Planetarium, a set of hymns to our solar system, for a BAM premiere in 2013, and at 2007’s BAM Next Wave Festival he unveiled The BQE, a symphonic poem about the Brooklyn–Queens Expressway. ROUND-UP, through the Craig Brothers’ slow-motion footage, is a chamber piece that takes the audience to the 2013 Pendleton Round-Up in Pendleton, Oregon to explore the roping, riding, and ritual of the rodeo.

Buy tickets here.

A new trailer is available for viewing now. See it above or here.

Indiewire premiered the trailer and interviewed Sufjan and the Craig Brothers. Said Sufjan on the topic of the composition and film: “Round-ups are steeped in a lifestyle of cattle ranchers, and they take place on these grounds — it’s a way of life that still exists. The film is part of a much bigger argument about the domestication of plants and animals and man’s relationship to the earth. It’s an existential issue that I think is crucial to have conversation about: man in modern society.”

Lover Killer: Haunting New Music Video From My Brightest Diamond

November 19th, 2014 , by

FLOOD Magazine has debuted a striking new music video of My Brightest Diamond’s “Lover/Killer.” Director Jean-Paul Frenay told FLOOD Magazine ““In a sense, I’m considering Lover Killer as an allegory of rebirth. Each one of us is facing different difficult choices throughout life. Sometimes the decisions we make are not even consciously taken. Sometimes this means to kill something you’ve loved: an idea, a thought or perhaps a friend. It’s the ineluctable rawness of life. I’m picturing those choices as little deaths, which lead to rebirth.”

My Brightest Diamond is on tour in the US now. Limited edition translucent red vinyl is available at AKR and your local record store.

New Music Video From Lily & Madeleine

November 19th, 2014 , by

Fumes, the new record from Lily & Madeleine, is out now. A review in The Daily Mail reads, “Fumes is bewitching but never too glossy and the harmonies are sublime.”

On Tuesday, Teen Vogue premiered the music video to “Can’t Admit It.” In the video, a couple faces the reality that things might (or might not) be over for them. Lily & Madeleine sing backdrop at a swanky club. Luke Tate and Jason Drake directed the video.

The limited edition pop-bottle-clear vinyl of Fumes is still available. Lily & Madeleine are on tour in Europe now, and touring in the US with Over The Rhine in December. See those tourdates here.

Out Now: Fumes, the New Album from Lily & Madeleine

October 28th, 2014 , by

Fumes, Lily & Madeleine’s second full-length, is out now.

The U.K.’s The Independent proclaims, “Never mind Difficult Second Album Syndrome .  . .  Fumes, an even better follow up.”

Here’s a sample of what Katie Presley wrote for NPR:

The foundation of Fumes, and of Lily & Madeleine’s career overall, is clearly two intrinsically connected women sharing stories and bearing witness to each other . . . Though both are still teenagers in possession of sweet, juvenescent voices, their lyrics are sharp and wielded skillfully. “The Wolf Is Free” and “Rabbit” possess Top 40-friendly instrumentation, but the former is undercut with deliciously creeping menace, while the latter features a biting perspective on breakups and perhaps the album’s most powerful moment: the line “Oh my god,” delivered without harmony and highlighted with echo.

You can hear the album here on NPR.

Buy it here; limited edition coke-bottle-clear vinyl is still available.

Hope You Didn’t Miss My Brightest Diamond At Austin City Limits

October 16th, 2014 , by

Audiences at the Austin City Limits performance of My Brightest Diamond were surprised by a Minor Mishap, but it was all part of the show. The live experience of the tour This Is My Hand, My Brightest Diamond’s ambitious and eclectic new LP, has been a full-tilt rock spectacle, and this time it included an appearance by Austin’s own Minor Mishap Marching Band.

Long fascinated by the spatial dimensions of sound, My Brightest Diamond vocalist and songwriter Shara Worden went into the planning of the This Is My Hand tour and record with every intention of making the concert a fully immersive sensory experience. In Austin, this meant recruiting the self-described “renegade circus-punk-brass band” Minor Mishap to parade through the crowd and onto the stage, marching, dancing, and pumping up the crowd with their own high-energy live show—a little bit Balkan, a little bit Dixieland, a little bit hip-hop—before breaking into the cadence for “Pressure,” the opening number of This Is My Hand and of MBD’s Austin City Limits set.

The entire Minor Mishap Marching Band performance, from the first steps of their procession through the crowd to the last note of “Pressure,” was captured in YouTube footage shot from the lawn in Austin, complete with honorary band member Worden in a drum-majoresque stage costume proudly accented with the yellow and black of the Minor Mishap uniform.

The local press went wild for My Brightest Diamond’s set, which the Austin Chronicle dubbed “one of the most underrated performances of the weekend.”

“Given the intensity of her songs,” said the Chronicle’s Doug Freeman, “Worden nevertheless projected exuberance and appreciation throughout, unleashing a guitar maelstrom” on the seething live version of This Is My Hand‘s complex and hypnotic “Resonance,” and concluding that “My Brightest Diamond has matured into a musical force.”

Now on tour in Europe, My Brightest Diamond returns to the US for another string of live dates from St. Paul to San Diego in November and December.

Fallen: Autumn AKR Sampler

October 3rd, 2014 , by

Our latest sampler is up just in time for autumn. The compilation begins with a shiner from My Brightest Diamond, follows up with Castanets, and proceeds down our eclectic catalog with songs from Mozart’s Siser, Helado Negro, and Lily & Madeleine, as well a retrospective inclusion of a song from Sufjan Stevens’ BQE.

Artist, architect, designer, musician, and skateboarder Matthew Skjonsberg designed the cover art.

You can download it for free on Noisetrade or Bandcamp.

Lily & Madeleine on Tonight’s Parenthood

September 25th, 2014 , by

Lily & Madeleine’s “Sounds Like Somewhere” will be on tonight’s premiere of the final season of Parenthood. Will it air during Amber’s pregnancy test? When Sandy drives into town? And what does it mean that this season will be about the “cycle of life?”

Watch it tonight on NBC 10pm EST.

New Helado Negro Video, Now on Tour

September 23rd, 2014 , by

The music of Helado Negro travels unusually well. Florida-born, Brooklyn-based, Roberto Carlos Lange—the man behind the Helado Negro moniker—composes grooves that are the definition of cosmopolitan. His new, emphatically bilingual LP, Double Youth, effectively hybridizes musical elements from across the Western Hemisphere—traces of experimental electronica, hip-hop, dub, and a range of Latin musical languages—into something deeply personal and unique, but as close as one could imagine to a universal music. Double Youth can expect to find itself at home wherever it goes.

This fall, Helado Negro’s Double Youth is spanning the coasts in a marathon tour starting Friday, Sept. 19 at The Roxy in Los Angeles. For these first West Coast dates—L.A., San Francisco, Portland, Vancouver, Seattle—Helado Negro is supporting sardonic pop symphonist and fellow Brooklynite Son Lux.

The second leg features the mesmerizing funk/soul of Sinkane—a singer-songwriter based in London and every bit as cosmopolitan as Helado Negro—and goes from Baby’s All Right in Brooklyn on Oct. 5 through Philadelphia; Washington, DC; Charlottesville, VA; Asheville, NC; Louisville, KY; Chicago, IL; and Minneapolis, MN before returning to the West Coast.

After more dates in Washington, Portland, San Francisco, L.A. and San Diego, Helado Negro and Sinkane swing back up through Tucson, Phoenix, Austin, New Orleans, Birmingham, Nashville, Columbus and Pittsburgh, before the final show in New York, NY on Sunday, Nov. 2.

Also: Helado Negro’s live performance on WNYC’s Soundcheck is now available in the form of an audio stream at wnyc.org—featuring the songs “Are I Here,” “Ojos Que No Ven,” “Invisible Heartbeat,” and an insightful interview with host John Schaefer—plus two YouTube videos for the performances of “Invisible Heartbeat” and “Are I Here” in the Soundcheck studio.

The performances feature Helado Negro himself, Roberto Lange, on lead vocals and electronics, with guest vocals from Xenia Rubinos and a very special appearance from a trio of “tinsel dancers,” three literally scintillating backup dancers who must be seen to be believed.

This Is My Hand Can Now Be Yours

September 16th, 2014 , by

“Before the words, there was the sound.”

Primal, cerebral, at times ecstatic or uncannily serene, the new My Brightest Diamond album is out today, a personal statement by singer/composer Shara Worden and a paean to the universal power of music. This Is My Hand is an album about reconnecting—with a community, with oneself, and with one’s own body.

The press is already raving. The Guardian dubs Worden an “operatic cult star”; NME says the new LP ought to mark Worden’s entry into the “US experimental pop pantheon.” Shara Worden has said that This Is My Hand is in part about reaching out to bring together a community of listeners. And Pitchfork.com insists that she has succeeded: “This Is My Hand works on a visceral level, conjuring Worden’s intended image of tribal, fireside collaboration through a rich diversity of texture, detail, and tone.”

Naturally, This Is My Hand—an album that explores communal listening and music-making—will also be bringing together crowds around the world all autumn long by fueling a forty-stop tour across the United States, as well as in Canada and Europe.

The tours kicks off with a hometown show in Detroit, MI on Sept 19, followed by an leg running south from Toronto, Canada to Atlanta, GA from Sept. 20-Oct. 1.  After a trio of Austin, TX shows (one on Oct. 3 and two on Oct. 10) during the Austin City Limits Festival, My Brightest Diamond plays The Kessler in Dallas, TX on Oct. 12, then heads to Europe for a string of performances on the Continent from Oct. 17-Oct. 26, plus four shows in the UK and Ireland Oct. 28-31. Finally, the tour returns home to the Midwest to conclude with a second run of US dates all the way from St. Paul, MN on Nov. 8 to San Diego, CA on Dec. 13.

This Is My Hand is available as a digital download, on CD, on black or limited edition red vinyl, and in a VIP edition literally, personally stamped with Worden’s own handprint (ed: sorry, hand-stamped edition is sold out!).

Don’t Wait: Listen to MBD’s This Is My Hand

September 8th, 2014 , by

Finally, it can be heard in full: NPR is offering an exclusive First Listen of This Is My Hand, the latest stage in the ongoing metamorphosis of My Brightest Diamond.

We’ve gotten sneak peeks at My Brightest Diamond’s new LP before, in the form of a pair of streaming singles and a visually stunning new video for its lead track, the defiant pop anthem “Pressure,” but This Is My Hand takes on another layer of meaning when listened to from beginning to end.

Shara Worden, the singer-songwriter of the My Brightest Diamond project, composed the album out of a deeply personal, almost confessional emotional impetus, but constructed it note by note and song by song according to a rigorous formal intelligence.

NPR’s Katie Presley gets it: “Worden’s music feels simultaneously micro-orchestrated and entirely, ecstatically spontaneous,” she says, adding, “Every song here works as both a mission statement and a directive that’s propulsive and demanding of full attention—while Worden’s voice, particularly in the title track, provides a firm yet loving affirmation.”

This preview of This Is My Hand is only available for a limited time, but the album will be available as a physical LP, CD or digital download on Tuesday, September 16.

Listen to the preview here.

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