Pens

Pens is a three piece punk band from England. They have released a split cassette (sold out) and a split 7" (buy it at Rough Trade if you're in the UK or can stomach paying $8 + shipping for a single). Pete did the best job of describing the trio on the Slumberland records blog.

The above band are called Pens. They’re three girls from London, making what can only be described as Shambolic Pop.
They used to be in the (better named, but worse musically) Look Look Dancing Boys. I haven’t seen Pens yet, but i have seen LLDB. they were, without a doubt, the most untogether band i had seen in years.

There was something refreshing about that. The lack of ego in their playing, the thrill of discovery, the getting to the end of a song as a major accomplishment. This is even more evident in Pens.

Freddie (yes, their myspace picture page confirms it’s about mr Kruger) is everything that a shambling band should be; constantly on the verge of falling apart, it’s held together by the sheer ‘i can’t believe we’re doing this’ forward motion of the song. The vocals are distorted. Everything’s distorted. They obviously just plugged everything into a pedal, thought it sounded punk, and went for it. Fantastic. There’s crosstalk, and stick clicks; it was obviously recorded live on some antiquated four track- not in a Toerag/Daptone posing way, but it’s genuinely all they had to work with.

Pens have an LP coming in February on De Stijl. Here is a zip file with the mp3s Slumberland posted along with the songs on Pens' MySpace.

Freddie mp3
High in the Cinema mp3
Download

Culturcide - Tacky Souvenirs of a Pre-Revolutionary America

Culturcide is an experimental punk band started in the early 80s by Perry Webb and Jim Craine. The band takes popular songs and dubs over them with their own vocals and instruments. It's very poor; you can hear the original lyrics behind what Webb is shouting unless its covered up with a loud guitar riff. But I think this has a positive effect overall.

Tacky Souvenirs is Culturcide's most well-known album and it earned them a few legal threats (though they didn't catch it as bad as Negativland). My favorite songs are Bruce, a comedic critique of "The Boss," and Industrial Band which mocks the industrial genre.

Check out this site for a complete discography and more info on Culturcide. The CD rereleases of the band's catalogue can be found on eBay, Amazon, etc.

Bruce mp3
Industrial Band mp3
Download

Streamable songs on Last.fm

There are tons of little known artists who have uploaded their music to Last.fm. Here are a few surprising finds along with recommended songs. Check them out.

The Room - An early 80s post-punk band that really sounds more like C86 than Joy Division, but they put out records long before the rise of indie pop. Listen to Things Have Learnt To Walk That Ought To Crawl

Valley of Kings - A post-punk band from Connecticut. Listen to Happy Hour

Nasty Facts - An English punk band. Listen to Drive My Car

Dreams So Real - REM-ish band from Athens. Listen to Love Fall Down

This Poison! - Short lived indie pop band from Scotland. Listen to Driving Skills

The Servants - English indie pop band. Listen to The Sun A Small Star

McCarthy - Anarcho-pop. Just fantastic. Listen to anything, though I Am A Wallet is my favorite album.

Creepy sounds from Saturn

Saturn is a source of intense radio emissions, which have been monitored by the Cassini spacecraft. The radio waves are closely related to the auroras near the poles of the planet. These auroras are similar to Earth's northern and southern lights. This is an audio file of radio emissions from Saturn.

The Cassini spacecraft began detecting these radio emissions in April 2002, when Cassini was 374 million kilometers (234 million miles) from the planet, using the Cassini radio and plasma wave science instrument. The radio and plasma wave instrument has now provided the first high resolution observations of these emissions, showing an amazing array of variations in frequency and time. The complex radio spectrum with rising and falling tones, is very similar to Earth's auroral radio emissions. These structures indicate that there are numerous small radio sources moving along magnetic field lines threading the auroral region.

Time on this recording has been compressed, so that 73 seconds corresponds to 27 minutes. Since the frequencies of these emissions are well above the audio frequency range, we have shifted them downward by a factor of 44.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radio and plasma wave science team is based at the University of Iowa, Iowa City.

from NASA

Listen to Saturn's radio emissions

Sounds like background music from an old science fiction movie. Well, there's your science lesson for the day.

I want to believe! Haha

I Was A King - Losing Something Good For Something Better

I first heard these guys on a free compilation from Eardrums which features their song "Norman Bleik." It instantly reminded me of JAMC so I searched around and found I Was A King had a CD out.

Losing Something Good is the band's first effort and though the album sounds more minimal and lo-fi than Norman Bleik it is still great. It only lasts for 17 minutes but that short time is filled with noisy pop songs mixed with lovably lo-fi, warm tracks that don't take more than a minute.

I Was A King have a self titled album coming out later this month in Norway, their home country. They also found a US label which will be releasing a 7" in late january and the s/t album sometime in April. You can find more info about the band and its upcoming releases on MySpace. Losing Something Good For Something Better can be purchased through CDBaby.

Best Wishes mp3
Break Away mp3
Download album

Mix #3 - Celebrity Music Party

Songs about famous people sung by not-so-famous people.

1. Felt - Penelope Tree
2. The Go-Betweens - Lee Remick
3. James Dean Driving Experience - Sean Connery
4. The Bodines - William Shatner
5. Television Personalities - Where's Bill Grundy Now
6. Angst - Neil Armstrong
7. The Briefs - Silver Bullet
8. Minutemen - Bob Dylan Wrote Propaganda Songs
   

Dead Leaf Echo - Pale Fire

Well this is cool. I never expected much to come out of this blog. I started it because I had way too much free time and figured I could spend some of that time introducing others to the bands I like. But last week I was contacted by the promoter for a group called Dead Leaf Echo. He offered to send me a copy of Pale Fire, the band's second EP, and after listening to some songs on MySpace I accepted.

Dead Leaf Echo come from New York and play shoegaze/dream pop with a tint of new wave. Think if Slowdive were from Manchester. Pale Fire starts off a bit rough with Warm Body which sounds out of place among the five tracks that follow. The second song, Thought Talk, is a better representation of the rest of Pale Fire with its male/female vocals and transition from soft and dreamy to noisy guitar sound about 3/4ths through. Other standout tracks are Tears and Cry The Sea.

You can listen to some tracks from Pale Fire as well as order the CD on Dead Leaf Echo's MySpace page.