Its been a while since we talked about new music in 2016. With the renos behind us, it’s time to look at some of the releases that have come out this year that we’ve been digging here at Backbeat. You can check out album info and sample tracks below.
But first we want to show you the latest turntable now available at Backbeat, the Teac TN-300. If you have been in since we expanded you probably noticed this mighty fine looking turntable, the cherry plinth with the aluminum die-cast platter is pretty stunning. It has an integrated phono pre-amp and USB output allowing you to hook it up directly to powered speakers or a stereo without a phono input, plus you can transfer music to your Mac or PC using the USB output. Get the full details here: http://www.backbeatperth.com/turntables/teac-tn-300/
FREE RECORDS!
When you purchase any of these new turntables you will receive store credit towards vinyl to start spinning right away. Sounds pretty awesome right?
Music Hall USB-1 – get $30 towards vinyl
Pro-Ject Essential II – get $45 towards vinyl
Teac TN-300 – get $50 towards vinyl
Pro-Ject Debut Carbon – get $75 towards vinyl
Pro-Ject Debut Carbon Esprit SB – get $100 towards vinyl
This offer ends on March 31st, 2016.
Check out our complete line of new turntables here: http://www.backbeatperth.com/product-category/turntables/
New Music
Here’s what has been getting our attention lately at Backbeat. Lots of great CanCon coming out lately.
The Besnard Lakes – A Coliseum Complex Museum
A Coliseum Complex Museum by The Besnard Lakes is an immense album with some of their best songs and sounds ever!
“Besnard Lakes focus their lush energy on a sunnier, catchier sound. Jace Lasek’s clean falsetto is more alive when paired with high-flying guitars, and alongside the band’s blanketed, nonlinear arrangements, he sounds like he’s studied the Bee Gees and Brian Wilson… they have remastered their trudging density into a pop jubilee.“- Pitchfork
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Basia Bulat – Good Advice
Sometimes making a break-up album is driving 600 miles to Kentucky to record the free-est songs you can get to tape. Sometimes it’s standing in a studio with a new friend behind the boards, and you’re shouting the words, “Come back / Or don’t.” Sometimes it’s your fourth album, sometimes it’s your best, sometimes the answer to your aching heart is a song in a major key.
Good Advice is the fizzing, phosphorescing new pop LP by songwriter Basia Bulat. Captured and produced by My Morning Jacket leader Jim James in Louisville, KY, it follows on 2013’s Polaris- and Juno-nominated Tall Tall Shadow and two years of tour-dates alongside acts like Sufjan Stevens, Daniel Lanois and Destroyer. These are 10 songs of desire and redemption, lit up with a bottle-rocket of liberated, faintly psychedelic sound. “Basia has something truly unique,” James says, “and her music was a truly extraordinary thing to witness.”
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High Fidelity – Original Soundtrack
Did you miss out on the Black Friday release? Well here it is once again for the getting. If you love records and love record shops then you likely love “High Fidelity”.
Tracklist:
The Thirteenth Floor Elevators – You’re Gonna Miss Me
The Kinks – Everybody’s Gonna Be Happy
John Wesley Harding – I’m Wrong About Everything
The Velvet Underground – Oh! Sweet Nuthin’
Love – Always See Your Face
Bob Dylan – Most Of The Time
Sheila Nicholls – Fallen For You
The Beta Band – Dry The Rain
Elvis Costello & The Attractions – Shipbuilding
Smog – Cold Blooded Old Times
Jack Black – Let’s Get It On
Stereolab – Lo Boob Oscillator
Royal Trux – Inside Game
The Velvet Underground – Who Loves The Sun
Stevie Wonder – I Believe (When I Fall In Love It Will Be Forever)
Aidan Knight – Each Other
Aidan’s been making music since his teens and has been putting out music since 2010. Although the name Aidan Knight belongs to the individual, the records have been a collaborative effort between himself and his band, a collection of classical music nerds, jazz aficionados, and experimental musical wizards. On the new album, Each Other, the collaborative spirit remains strong amongst the band but the vision is solely that of Knight’s.
Each Other took just over a year to make and had the band recording across Canada in BC, Ontario and Quebec. Knight and the band (Olivier Clements, David Barry, Colin Nealis, Julia Knight) began recording in Bath, Ontario, a rural town in eastern Ontario in which the main industry is housing the provinces largest maximum security prison. Aidan enlisted Marcus Paquin, who has worked with The National, Arcade Fire, Local Natives and Stars, to produce the album. The band and Paquin were meticulous with each song, piecing together the raw energy of the live show along with the layered textures that could only be captured in the studio. An exhaustive process to say the least which Knight reflects on in saying, “Marcus, guided an unruly collection of ideas and a sometimes impulsive person (me) with remarkable patience (Marcus is also a new father).”
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The Tortoise – The Catastrophist
Simply put, Tortoise has spent nearly 25 years making music that defies description. While the Chicago-based instrumental quintet has nodded to dub, rock, jazz, electronica and minimalism throughout its revered and influential six-album discography, the resulting sounds have always been distinctly, even stubbornly, their own.
It’s a fact that remains true on “The Catastrophist,” Tortoise’s first studio album in nearly seven years. And it’s an album where moody, synth-swept jams like the opening title track cozy up next to hypnotic, bass-and-beat missives like “Shake Hands With Danger” and a downright strange cover of David Essex’s 1973 radio smash sung by U.S. Maple’s Todd Rittman. Throughout, the songs transcend expectations as often as they delight the eardrums.
Savages – Adore Life
Savages’ second album “Adore Life” was recorded at RAK Studios, London in April 2015. Johnny Hostile was the producer and Richard Woodcraft the engineer. Anders Trentmøller took care of mixing in Copenhagen. Adore Life may be even more intense than the group’s debut album, 2013’s Silence Yourself. “We wanted to write the hardest, most extreme songs we could ever write,” singer Jehnny Beth told Rolling Stone. The album’s lead single, ‘The Answer’, which Stereogum called “a huge and surging monster of a song. with a titanic riff” was followed by T.I.W.Y.G., that Rolling Stone called “vicious” and “heavy.”On the accompanying video, the band says: We’ve observed our audience all around the world and noticed that something is happening. People want to be pushed to do good, or to be good, or just to feel good. We wanted a very intense video, that felt like banging your head against the wall, focusing on our audience: a portrait of our crowd, an homage to music lovers and the good people who are coming to gigs and shouting their lungs out, or just smiling at the back. We were touched by them every night, and wanted to get their message out there: loud guitar music is still alive and still connects people.
Tess Parks – Blood Hot
Long overdue vinyl issue of Tess Parks 2013 Mazzy Star-esque debut. Pressed on limited 180gram transparent red and black marble vinyl. A native of Toronto, Tess Parks moved to London, England at the age of seventeen where she briefly studied photography before deciding to focus on music. Tess made an impression on industry legend Alan McGee, founder of Creation Records, albeit the timing of their meeting could hardly have been less ideal; McGee was no longer involved in music and Tess was due to move back to Toronto. After moving back to her hometown in 2012, Tess formed a band on the advice of McGee and less than a year after their meeting, he returned to music with his new label, 359 Music. Tess became one of his first signings and released her debut record ‘Blood Hot’ in November 2013 to excellent reviews. One reviewer described her as “Patti Smith on Quaaludes”. Others have mentioned her “gauzy psychedelic sound” and “smouldering voice”. Alan McGee himself said: “She’s only 24 and is already an amazing songwriter… she just doesn’t quite know she is yet … her most beautiful quality is her lack of ego. Tess is an amazing lady”.
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Amy Winehouse – Frank
Vinyl issue of Many Winehouse’ first album “Frank” from 2003 is available for the first time in North America.
Your Friend – Gumption
Since the release of her debut self-recorded EP, Jekyll/Hyde, in early 2014 via Domino, Taryn Miller (Your Friend) brings us her debut album Gumption.
Miller began writing the songs that would become Gumption at her studio space and apartment in Lawrence, KS after returning from touring in mid-2014. Recorded with producer Nicolas Vernhes (The War on Drugs, Deerhunter) at the Rare Book Room in Brooklyn, Your Friend fulfilled a penchant for drones, loops and found sounds. “I paid attention to textures,” Miller says. “I was trying to remove myself from an approach that I had followed before, but to be able to bring in that melodic element that is most inherent to me, and marry it with a more sonically meditative landscape.”
Gumption deals with growing pains that come from self-inducing this sense of quiet that can be uncomfortably revealing. “I was sitting with myself so much, I got to know myself in ways I liked and ways I didn’t like,” Miller admits. Gumption is a record of courage, as its title suggests – of having the willingness to make necessary shifts, and to have a sense of self-awareness that ultimately leads to growth.
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All that great music should keep you spinning for awhile!