Hailing from Toronto, Canada, Picastro’s music could just as easily have come from the sprawling emptiness of North America’s deserts. It melds rustic and contemporary styles, and instrumentation, into a fluid and uniquely nihilist brand of folk music, which is underpinned at all times by the rich, brooding vocals of vocalist and frontwoman Liz Hysen. I spoke with Hysen about Picastro’s fourth and latest album, Become Secret — which is arguably their best collection of songs to date — and asked her about some of the influences behind the group’s music.
Become Secret is a great album. When did you start writing the songs for it?
“Thanks. I guess about 3 years ago. I started writing some of the tracks with Stephanie Vittas, the original cellist and once we realized we had enough for an album, we came up with some more songs.”
Do you write songs by sitting at a piano, or with a guitar, or what?
“About 90% of the time, it starts with an instrument, yes. Lately I have been writing too with just a vocal melody but I can’t flesh out a whole song that way yet.”
Note: This is a guest post by Marx’s Beard from the excellent music blog cowsarejustfood, covering Zombie Zombie’s performance of the music of John Carpenter at the Glasgow Film Festival, 2010. Email subscribers click here to enjoy the full multimedia experience.
AUDIO: John Carpenter - Assault On Precinct 13 Theme
the horror, the horror moaned kurtz, with hellish realisation, with a camp sartorial (un)knowing of humanities grim nature. it’s like he’s on the sixty two hell-bus with me heading to mono, approaching the fag-end of town, instead of the slightly less threatening environs of the cambodian jungle. if it wasn’t so fucking funny, this journey, it’d be funny.
and, if brevity is the soul of wit (according to polonius, that tedious old fool) then the same rule surely applies to horror, the psychological yin to comedies yang. less is always more. horror done properly is in implication. not explicit, but uncertain. not expressed but repressed. not conscious, but subconscious. an expression of societies darktime unthoughts. the terror, y’know like hp lovecraft’s assaults of chaos and the demons of unplumbed space. contrast y’know the first michael myers, the dreamy inexplicable knifing machine with the lumbering blundering unstoppable moron, the indestructible wwf thug he became.
What better way to celebrate spring’s imminent arrival than with some fresher-than-fresh prog pop from Danish quintent Oh No Ono. Having already produced one of the year’s best albums to date, the excellent Eggs (The Leaf Label), the band hit Glasgow’s Captains Rest tonight for what should be an unmissable showcase of style-juggling pop and elaborate compositions in a similar vein to fellow experimental Danes Mew, Speaker Bite Me and Under Byen. Here is a little taster of how it might go. For under a tenner it can’t possibly be wrong.
CocoRosie have announced details of a new album, Grey Oceans, which is set for release on May 3 by [PIAS] Recordings. The uncompromising duo, who incorporate fairytale lyrics, synthesised beats, piano, and field sounds in their music, will then tour the UK throughout May. Tracks on Grey Oceans include ‘God Has A Voice, She Speaks Through Me’, a “dance song about suicide, spiritual ecstasy and life under the veil”, and the album is said to feature collaborations with the jazz pianist Gael Rakotondrabe.
Secret Wars, the ‘Fight Club of art battles’, comes to Glasgow this week for a live art showdown between artists from here and Malmo (Sweden). Expect pure, ink-based sparring, plus electro music from Spectrum and guest DJs.
Full deets here and here. Images used courtesy of Recoat.
Whether you know Sir Richard Bishop as a founder of cult rock savages Sun City Girls, or as the solo artist behind a slew of quasi-mystical guitar-based longplayers, you won’t want to miss the chance to catch a live performance from the man himself, as he visits Glasgow as part of a lengthy European tour. With a diverse repertoire encompassing North African, Indian and Gypsy music, the only real guarantee here is guitar, though you may well hear moments from Bishop’s 2009 release The Freak Of Araby (Drag City), which heavily covered pieces by Egyptian composer Omar Khorshid. Bishop will be supported by Glasgow’s own Graeme Ronald (Remember Remember) of Rock Action Records fame, whose tuneful, ambient, electronic compositions bring to mind Phillip Glass, Four Tet and Sufjan Stevens. Also in the fray and guaranteeing a fruitful night of musical eclecticism, are RM Hubbert (formerly of El Hombre Trajeado) and a DJ set from Daniel Padden (The One Ensemble, Volcano The Bear). Sweet.
After creating a minor masterpiece with 2008’s Midnight Organ Fight, the five-piece known as Frightened Rabbit (multi-instrumentalist Gordon Skene was added to the fray in late 2009) have returned with their third full-length studio effort. The Winter of Mixed Drinks (March 1 2010, FatCat Records) is a more diffused, slow-burner of an album, which includes the singles ‘Swim Until You Can’t See Land’ and ‘Nothing Like You’. It’s been a while since we last spoke to lead frabbit Scott Hutchison, so a quick catch-up was well overdue…
What have you been up to lately?
“Sorting out our US visas and touring in Australia. You’ve got to keep busy…”
What music has been rocking your stereo / portable device /etc so far in 2010?
“This year, I’ve been listening to The Avett Brothers, Wild Beasts and this one song by Vampire Weekend I think is incredible it’s called ‘I Think UR A Contra’. I’m also enjoying tuning in to Jurassic Pork radio at koop.org.”
Note: this is a guest post by iconoclastic music scribe cowsarejustfood. Read more from him at the cowsarejustfood blog. Email subscribers please click here for the full multimedia shenanigans.
consider punk rock as rorschach; a butterfly, a bomb, a book, a boot. an inkblot schmear revealing trotsky; class; money; unity; war; gender; party; violence; acceptance; conformity; disestablishment; fashion; division; beer; poverty; change. everything to everyone.
consider punk, undistilled. life, unified, not by consensus, but by disparity, by contradiction. a kindof antagonistic dependency. when everyone thinks alike, everyone is likely to be wrong. discord, dissent and disorder as essential parts of being.
consider the antagonist (n.) one who contends with another, especially in combat; an adversary; an opponent (n.) a muscle which acts in opposition to another; e.g. a flexor, which bends a part, is the antagonist of an extensor, which extends it (a.) antagonistic; opposing; counteracting; as, antagonist schools of philosophy.
As the press release accompanying Ulrich Schnauss’s Missing Deadlines - Selected Remixes says, too many remixes consist of nothing more than a beats-by-numbers instrumental with an acapella thrown on top. The idea being that here the enigmatic German producer has produced more than just slack, binary juxtopositions with this collection of reinterpreations, which takes on the work of Mark Gardener, A Sunny Day In Glasgow, and Howling Bells among others. Schnauss’s main strength is his sound grasp of production, which sits somewhere between gossamer shoegaze, and ambient, techno-inspired soundscapes. And he starts proceedings well, burying Howling Bells’ already-excellent ‘Setting Sun’ in just the right level of fuzz to accent its soaring chorus, before adding a touch of inspired Cocteau Twins etherealism to Asobi Seksu’s ‘Strawberries’, alongside equally-adept takes on tracks by A Sunny Day In Glasgow and Mark Gardner. Only odd moments like a lacklustre reworking of Japanese ambient artist Aus’s ‘Halo’, and a slightly tepid take on Madrid’s ‘Out To Sea’, show that Schnauss’s armour is actually penetrable, and overall Missing Deadlines is a sonically delicious collection of music, which perfectly encapsulates his accomplished and invigorative style of production, not to mention his skills as a remixer.
As if it hadn’t been covered everywhere else on the internet already, here are two new tracks from Joanna Newsom’s forthcoming triple-CD album, Have One On Me, which drops February 23 on Drag City. Newsom acolytes will be thrilled at the prospect of three new CDs from the elfin-voiced songwriter and harpist, and judging by these two leaked tracks the LP will be epic in length and quality, with Newsom sounding as striking, outlandish and articulate as ever.
