Friday, April 29, 2011

Autumnal Tunes

As we segue into autumn, you'll no doubt be looking to Surface to Air to supply you with a suitably sensuous soundtrack to cradle those seductive crimson hues and gently unfurl your once-lost, but now deepened appreciation of winter's encroaching irresistible intimacy.


Either that, or you've worn out all your summer-time recordings with a cheeky extended run which is now nagging at your innerspeaker like a mossie in your ear.


Should you find any one or more of the following records on your turntable - then you're gonna be just fine.  Curl your autumn days and/or nights around some or all of these artists and I promise the only chills you'll be feeling this May/June will be of the sonic-emotive variety.


Apocalypse by Bill Callahan
Bill Callahan: Drover by -gaga


Take care, take care, take care by Explosions In The Sky
Explosions in the Sky Live by mike.ziegler


I Am Very Far by Okkervil River
Okkervil River - Show Yourself by lilapit

Tomboy by Panda Bear
Panda Bear - Tomboy Single by markwall53

Nine Types of Light by TV On The Radio
TV On The Radio - Repetition by Interscope Records

Wit's End by Cass McCombs
Cass McCombs - County Line by DominoRecordCo

Department of Eagles

Have yourself some weekend-morning, sunny-rooftop, east-river, gentle vibe-outs with the Department of Eagles..

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Beastly Trippin' Rap Shite? Hell Yes!!

It's been suggested in some particularly wiffy corners that Surface to Air has been deliberately, no - arrogantly, shunning the very real contribution of the rap and hip hop community of artisans to the really real future-shock of the new music which isn't happened yet.


Well behold, rap stylin the future is splattered right here on Surface to Air. Do stand back though.



Special thanks James G.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

New Wilco Double Album?



Over the last year, Wilco have taken time out from touring and side-projects to work on their eighth record, the band's first since 2009's Wilco (the album). But now Jeff Tweedy and Co. are in the homestretch, putting in long hours at their Chicago loft studio for an album that's tentatively slated for release in September, on the group's newly formed label dBpm Records.

"We're still chipping away at it", says Tweedy.  "We're just doing some overdubs and some tracking, but we're pretty far along."

So far, Wilco have laid down some 20 tracks for the album, which has the working title of Get Well Soon Everybody. Tweedy says the material fits into two categories: experimental-leaning rock and "cinematic-sounding country music…you know, folk music."

The band — Tweedy, bassist John Stirrat, guitarist Nels Cline, drummer Glenn Kotche, multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone, and keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen — hasn't decided which tracks will make the final product, but Tweedy says it could end up being a two-disc set. "I don't know what type of record is going to win out or if it just ends up as a double record," he says. "I put off that decision until I know which songs are still kicking my ass."

The finished album may be one of the group's most adventurous yet. "I do think it's a little bit more obnoxious and irreverent of a pop record than people have heard from us, maybe, ever," he says. "And that's exciting. But I have no doubt that the second this record becomes available there's somebody sitting in a basement at their computer with the word 'meh' already typed up, waiting to post a review."  Tweedy is being modest. One new song, "Art of Almost," has an experimental feel, like 2009's "Bull Black Nova" and 2004's "Spiders (Kidsmoke)." It's a seven-minute, two-parter that starts as a free-form jam, punctuated with burbling synths, mellotrons, and tribal drums. It swells into a punk-ish coda, with virtuosic, fuzzed-out guitar shredding courtesy of Cline, the band's secret weapon. Tweedy says the inspiration for the track came from Neil Young. "It's a sort of atmospheric song you might hear on Tonight's the Night," he says.

"I don't know what happened to that song, to be honest. It just sort of morphed over time into something that's a lot more interesting to us now."

But that isn't the most out-there track on the album: Wilco have also cut a 14-minute jam tentatively titled "Song for Jane Smiley's Boyfriend." Loosely inspired by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author's books, Tweedy says it's an autobiographical tune with ten verses: "It has a pretty long narrative."

The final version of Get Well Soon Everybody could also have plenty of potentially pop-friendly songs. Or, as Tweedy describes it, "Other people's pop music that doesn't sound like pop music." "Whole Love" is an easy-going country-rocker that finds Tweedy testing out his falsetto skills. "I gave it the old college try," he jokes. "Born Alone," meanwhile, starts as an up-tempo, synthed-out slab of power pop, with sharp chord changes that are similar to the group's 1999 song "Summer Teeth." Halfway through, however, it explodes into a thick, distorted wall of noise, with Tweedy and Cline's guitar chords descending to the subways.

Tweedy, who went to rehab for painkiller addiction around the time of Wilco's 2003 album A Ghost Is Born, is clean and sober nowadays and he isn't afraid to revisit that dark part of his life lyrically. In fact, he's willing to make light of it.

"There's a lyric on one song that goes 'I spit and swallowed opioids,'" he says with a laugh. "That was more about the way it rhymes. It just sounded good." But has sobriety changed his approach to songwriting? "The only thing I've noticed is that I can stay awake longer," he admits. "I have more energy. I don't know, people make a big deal out of all those things — how drugs reflect the creative process. I really think I'm in the minority."

Wilco's eighth album won't be ready until September at the earliest, but the group will release a 7-inch single titled "I Might," backed, fittingly, by a cover of Nick Lowe's "I Love My Label" — the first release for their new imprint. It will be available at the band's Solid Sound Festival, taking place June 24-26 in North Adams, MA, with a wider release planned for July. Judging by Tweedy's description, "I Might" seems to fall underneath the band's overarching sonic mission with the album. "It's obnoxious," Tweedy jokes. Lady Gaga's "Judas" obnoxious? "Well, it doesn't sound like Lady Gaga but it's our way of being obnoxious."

Interview courtesy of some sponger at SPIN.

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Sexy SXSW!

Easily one of the best live events this last quarter - Austin's legendary South By South-West (SXSW) independent music extravaganza! Surface to Air brings you a swathe of spectacu-mental jams from the alt-bros and rock-chicks who lifted off into low-Earth orbit and made this event the must-see, go-to, splash-down, freak-out musical event of the year.


To get your groove warmed right up, taste the hot licks and fresh moves of Raphael Saddiq and his crazy crazy charts - and the mad cats who play 'em. Somehow! Strap in first. Or you might find yourself wriggling sideways, on the floor!


Rock-off!...



Right. Enough of that rubbish. Give me rock!


I give you.. Kurt Vile and Violators. One of the late-blooming SXSW stand-outs. Yeah.


Hunchback by Kurt Vile> by Richard

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Bill Callahan's Apocalypse

In the lead-up to Bill's hotly anticipated new long player, Surface to Air brings you an intimate Callahan concert like no other - the tiny-desk concert.





And the new song 'Baby's Breath' to brush new air upon your musical taste buds. This one's for you Craigus.  So how can a wave possibly be?


Bill Callahan - Baby's Breath by paulboom


Thursday, April 7, 2011

Star Quarter-Back!

Welcome to Star Quarter-Back!, Surface to Air's quarterly look-back at what went well, and what went horribly wrong over the last three of months of independent music mayhem.


This quarter has been a boisterous one, back-dropped by revolutionary upheavals and predictable warmongering and not so predictable (but somehow inevitable) planetary shudderings which unleashed their fury on a hopelessly nice but oh-so poorly positioned great nation of Japan. This edition of Star Quarter-Back! is dedicated to all the Japanese alt-bros and alt-girls who dig their rock and who will rock again in the very near future!


Let's commence reflections with an early release from the predictably ethereal (but now just plain late) Fleet Foxes' forthcoming long player. So stand back.. no, better still - sit back, and let the Foxes' sonic-harmonic-pleasantness envelope your mind with the first musical seasonings of 2011.



Fleet Foxes - Grown Ocean from Fleet Foxes on Vimeo.

How's that reverb?!!


And if that's not enough to whet your damn appetite, let's slip back 30 years, this quarter, to a young man who knew a little something about drums...



Stay tuned music fans. Star Quarter-Back! has only just begun...