October 2009
11 posts
3 tags
E.K. Wimmer - The Invisible Audience + Interview
E.K. Wimmer is one of my top favorite artists to be featured here at AFIN, and also an all-around nice, cool, multi-talented fellow. His last album, What Was Once Veduta is Now Found was reviewed favorably here in January, as well as the single from this album “Puppets and Ninjas”. His incredible new album The Invisible Audience was just released and I got a chance to interview E.K....
4 tags
Julian Casablancas - Phrazes for the Young
I feel as if I have been waiting for this forever. The last Strokes album, First Impressions of Earth, came out in 2006, and came off as uneven and awkward, leaving me significantly less than satisfied. Not that I wanted them to keep being the garage rock revivalists of Is This It (2001), undoubtedly one of the most important albums of the 2000s, but the spark seemed to have been slowly slipping...
6 tags
Whitney Ballen
Whitney Ballen’s music is magic. The first time listening was one of those moments that reality snaps in an inaudible high frequency pitch before your eyes and all that’s left are these surreal, extra-real songs. If you’re curious, it’s something like simple but effective acoustic guitar and drums with her high voice that has a quality something like tape and wax and...
5 tags
Independent Music Discoveries, Issue #24
*UPDATE* The Royal Chains (Issue # 10) - Pop / Rock - New York, USA Featured some months ago in regards to their free album Umbrella, the Royal Chains have a fabulous new single out: “Wolf”. The sound is noticeably cleaner and more focused than that heard on their debut album (though I do love that for it’s grittiness too), summery and catchy as ever! —- Francois Peglau -...
3 tags
AFIN Music Videos Hits 1,000 + Britpop Forum...
I am proud to announce today that our sister site, A Future in Noise Music Videos, has hit 1,000 unique videos posted. This is powered by Tumblr, functional as a channel due to the RANDOM button, with an assortment of embedded music videos from the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and 00s, posted daily. Started in July, it’s already the #2 Tumblr tagged as “video” and we have over 100...
7 tags
Weekend Listens: Echo & the Bunnymen, The Flaming...
Echo & the Bunnymen are one of my favorite bands of all-time; I have loved them since I was a kid, from hearing my mom play their albums regularly. As with most of their then-contemporaries that have stuck around through the years, this band have mellowed-out in their sound significantly over time. They have also had to deal with the loss of drummer Pete de Freitas in 1989 and in September...
14 tags
Starter Guide: Baroque Pop
What is it? Baroque Pop (aka Baroque Psych – let’s call it BP) is Garage Psych’s rather elegant and refined cousin. Where the latter is all overdriven guitars, shoutyness and acid drenched solos, BP - with its frilly sleeves and paisley cravat, augments the basic rock band with the strains of chamber string quartet, a sprinkling of harpsichord and the swoon of an oboe. These songs are usually a...
5 tags
Independent Music Discoveries, Issue #23
*UPDATE* The Forcefield Kids (Issue #5) - Hip-Hop / Alternative / Electronica / Northeast, UK Due out November 2nd, the Forcefield Kids (Stain(ed) Art bringing the raps and Sleepy on beats) are releasing a new 5-track EP Harmony & Discord. Their socially-conscious delivery, sounding current with, and better than much of what’s out there in the genre, in my opinion, modern hip-hop/rap,...
4 tags
Natural Snow Buildings - Shadow Kingdom
French duo Natural Snow Buildings, Mehdi Ameziane / TwinSisterMoon and Solange Gularte / Isengrind, are a band I have spoken highly of previously, be it in Under the Radar 2009 and 15 Brilliant Out-of-Print Albums, and also in a guest-post artist feature on SleepWalking Mag about. They’ve just put out Shadow Kingdom a triple-LP/double CD on Blackest Rainbow. Following that SleepWalking Mag...
4 tags
Interview with Calvin Markus from Dead Times
Calvin Markus, from Dead Times (a band which has been previously featured here, and one of my favorites of the 2000s - see also the reviews on Midnight Glass and Voidism, Vol. 1 + Graves House split cassette), took the time to answer some interview questions for A Future in Noise. I think that Dead Times is making some of the most cool and important music (as well as art works, literature, and...
4 tags
Independent Music Discoveries, Issue #22
Untied States - Other - Georgia, USA I keep doing a double-take every time I see the band name - note the Untied, though that is surely the point! I tend to raise an eyebrow at bands that put their genre as ‘Other’, but this is one case where a group is concocting something unique. With their description reading “a barrage of driving samples, interlaced melodic sheets of guitars,...