Though twin brothers Joe and Luke McGarry have been playing together as Pop Noir for roughly five years, it wasn't until yesterday that their group, rounded out by drummer Nico Saavedra, released its first single. Those who have had the chance to catch Pop Noir at their fairly regular gigs across Los Angeles and Orange County will instantly recognize "DIY" as a staple of their sets. The song also serves as a mantra for the band: Joe and Luke not only produce their own material, but direct their videos and design all flyers, t-shirts and even the digital magazine that serves as their press kit.
We chatted with the McGarry brothers about coming of age as a band and taking the slow-and-steady route to a music career.
Norwegian indie pop icon Annie is back. Finally. With Don't Stop out today, five years after the release of her acclaimed debut, Anniemal, the singer/DJ continues her vision of shimmery dance pop with a subversive, underground electronic edge.
Tonight, Annie will be DJing at Cinespace and so we gave her a call yesterday to talk about vinyl and club nights.
Big city music rivalries be damned, if you want something major to happen, let the LA underground and the New York underground join forces. We learned this last week when Wierd Fest hit our fair town.
Click here to view Shannon Cottrell's slideshow from Hello Kitty's Bats and Cats Masquerade.
If there's one song that can drag me to the dance floor anytime it's played, it's "Lady Shave," a weird, minimal synth gem from Fad Gadget. Friday night, when DJ Amanda Jones (Malediction Society, Perversion, Das Bunker) dropped it at Royal/T's Hello Kitty Bats and Cats party, I tried to dance, but it just wasn't going to happen. Even if the song had a pogo beat, which it certainly doesn't, there would have been no room to move. The back room of Royal/T was packed, just as the cafe in the front portion of the venue and the gift shop were crammed with people. Somewhere between the lines to get into the gift shop, get seats in the cafe and get photos taken with Hello Kitty, goths, metalheads, Lolitas and Sanrio-obsessed youngsters were squeezed together into a sea that rarely parted.
Last night, monthly minimal synth and coldwave party Killing Spree got Wierd when DJ Pieter Schoolwerth and members of Xeno and Oaklander, Martial Canterel and Blacklist arrived to kickoff this weekend's Wierd Festival. Organized and promoted by Schoolwerth and Killing Spree promoter/DJ Sarah Cake, the event will mix up bands from the New York City-based label with its West Coast kin.
In 2009, there have been few albums that have grabbed this writer like Blacklist's debut full-length, Midnight of the Century. The Brooklyn-based band seems to be completely at odds with the this decade's dominant rock sounds. Where so many other have embraced minimalism, Blacklist creates a dense, dramatic sound, like The Cult before the band sounded like it cut its teeth on the Sunset Strip, with a pulsating rhythm section that hints at '70s hard rock. Where irony and pop culture references have permeated turn-of-the-century music, Blacklist are dead serious, unafraid to reference literature and philosophical schools in their lyrics. Lest you write off the music as pretentious, we will argue that it isn't, Blacklist is simply smart, well-read and ready to challenge its audience.
Saturday night, Blacklist headlines Wierd Fest, a two-day event at downtown venue Nomad bringing together New York City's Wierd Records family with local musicians like Frank Alpine and Nite Jewel. We caught up with the band's vocalist/guitarist Josh Strawn by phone.
Last weekend at Pacific Media Expo, we flipped over Takuya Angel. The Japanese designer/DJ works with his wife Akiko to create unusual pieces that cross over between the wa (traditional Japanese) and cyber styles popular in Tokyo clubs.
Shannon Cottrell
Akiko Angel at PMX
Amongst the more popular items at PMX were the deco eyelashes worn by Akiko Angel in the above photo. The eyelashes varied in price, typically between $25 and $45 depending on the intricacies of the design. Each set is handmade by Akiko and features embellishments like bows and hearts.
Friday night, I headed deep into one of downtown's warehouse neighborhoods for the closing night party of "Modern Nomads: An Anthropological Exhibition of a Lost Culture Not Yet Founded" at artist workspace TOW. The massive project featured contributions from local musicians Don Bolles (The Germs, 45 Grave, Club Ding-a-Ling) and D. Bene Tleilax (Romak & the Space Pirates,The Tleilaxu Music Machine) and was centered around a behemoth woolly mammoth installation.
The unsung influence of LA's noisy electronic underground is Venetian Snares. The one-man project of Winnipeg native Aaron Funk, Venetian Snares has been experimenting both with ambience and with aggressive beats since the late-'90s. For local artists like Baseck, Kawaiietly Please and Eustachian, he is the guy that helped make their own strange sounds possible.
Liz Ohanesian
Venetian Snares at Darkmatter Soundsystem, 2/28/09
When Venetian Snares popped up at a Darkmatter System party last February, the crowd went nuts. (You should have seen the line after the text messages were sent. Read our recap of that event.) Tonight, he plays the Key Club. Prepare yourself.
On Halloween, I stopped by Roberto's in Chinatown for The Wolfpak's holiday party featuring a live performance from Burning Image. The Bakersfield band first formed in the wake of California's early-'80s deathrock explosion and then reformed earlier this decade after Alternative Tentacles released a compilation of its initial work (you can find out more by reading LA Weekly's interview with frontman Moe Adame). The set was a heavy, high energy mix of old and new material and left me thinking, maybe it's time to explain deathrock.
You can pack thousands of scantily clad party people into a theater and give them Deadmau5 and Justice, but no mega-party can compare to goth clubs during this spookiest of holiday seasons. Friday night, we headed to Koreatown to start our weekend at Ruin's Grimm Fairytale Ball featuring DJs Xian (Malediction Society, Wumpskate) and Pumpkin (Wandering Marionettes, Cirque Berzerk). Throughout the night, we were reminded of why so many call Halloween "Goth Christmas" and so, we've compiled eight great reasons why goth clubs are the only place to spend Halloween.
The weekend went by way too quickly, but for those who want to keep up their night-on-the-town streak, Curt Smith, who you might recognize from a little band called Tears for Fears, is playing Hotel Cafe tonight. We've been told that Smith is going on stage at 8 p.m., so it's early enough to not totally ruin your sleep schedule.
Back in the early '80s, when deathrock was taking over California, a group of young guys from Bakersfield formed Burning Image. They released a 7" single and played with bands like Specimen, Dead Kennedys and Butthole Surfers. Years after their demise, Jello Biafra re-released Burning Image's music on Alternative Tentacles and interest in the band was renewed. They regrouped, began playing again, and released an album of new material, Fantasma, earlier this year.
At close to midnight, there were twenty or thirty people inside the living room of HM157, the large, Victorian house that has become a center for the art community in Lincoln Heights and hosted Wednesday night's Church of Fashion party. Roughly half of that crowd was crammed between a doorway that divided the room between audience and band. The lighting saturated the makeshift stage in a strange, orange glow and smoke rose around the performers. Standing in the center was a ghost with exceptionally broad shoulders. The ghost began performing an aria, the haunting voice quickly quieting the room. When it ended, the specter threw off the white sheet and revealed its true identity, or at least an identity for the show, Klaus Nomi.
Ever wondered what it would be like to see Klaus Nomi live? Yeah, I have too. So, last night, I headed to Church of Fashion's Halloween party to see Knomi, which is essentially a tribute to the late, great singer. Watching the ghost of Klaus Nomi appear before a group of costumed people inside a rambling old LA house is now right up there with catching Hope Sandoval play at a cemetery as the eeriest music moments of the year.
Last week, I put together a small playlist of mostly '80s tunes that reminded me of Halloween, but weren't the usual holiday hits. The response was great and I couldn't help but take notice of reader Alexander Tregaskis' comment:
" I really wish the definition of 'goth' didn't get tainted by the mainstream, and 'emo' trends these days.
Bauhaus, Mission UK, Alien Sex Fiend, Virgin Prunes...We need to bring that scene back. There are a few modern bands like White Rose Movement that have the right feel, though."
In 1996, I saw The Cure at The Forum, where the band played for three hours and offered no opening band. It was phenomenal, mostly because it was The Cure, a band that was celebrating its twentieth anniversary and had accumulated a mountain of (mostly) amazing albums. I thought then that no one else could sustain a set like that, and, until last weekend, I had never seen anyone attempt a similar feat. Then I saw Emilie Autumn.
Last night at the Key Club in Los Angeles, Emilie Autumn proclaimed that the fiddle is the new guitar. We concur and went on to capture her epic solo on video. With her astounding talent for shredding, it's no wonder that she has played on Metalocalypse. We'll have a full review later this afternoon.
Saturday night, Echo and the Bunnymen will be at Nokia Theatre complete with an orchestra at which time they will be playing Ocean Rain. All of it. It will be epic.
In the US, Emilie Autumn has long been well-known for her violin skills. She has played with Courtney Love and Billy Corgan and her violin "shredding" can even be heard on Metalocalypse. But, for years now, she has been releasing solo records and touring across Europe with her band, The Bloody Crumpets. After a three year wait, Autumn's career-defining album, Opheliac, will finally be available Stateside through label The End. The album precedes the December release of her book, The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls, which combines a detailed account of Autumn's battle with bipolar disorder with historical details of Victorian asylums.
You're at a Hello Kitty party inside a maid cafe and realize that you're standing next to Dave Navarro. What do you do?
You ask him who his favorite Sanrio character is. I was expecting him to mention one of the darker characters, maybe Badtz-Maru or even new addition to the clan, Kuromi. I was wrong.
Now that you're probably engaged in the almost-last minute Halloween costume cram session, you might be in the need for some tunes to get you through the hours of skirt-hemming and wig-styling. At the same time, though, we figured you might be a little tired of hearing Ministry's "Every Day is Halloween" and half of Oingo Boingo's discography yet again. With that in mind, take some time to enjoy this playlist of disturbingly awesome (mostly) '80s music.
Bauhaus "Party of the First Part"
Just say no to "Bela Lugosi's Dead" this Halloween. Yeah, it's a cool song anytime of year, but it's played out every October and Bauhaus has so many more spooky themes. My favorite is "Party of the First Part," which samples dialogue from the Halloween cartoon The Devil and Daniel Mouse.
Tank is the drummer for Huntington Beach-based band The Change Viet Rock. When he's not on stage, he pops up in the most unexpected places with a camera person and a few friends to show the world how to do the industrial stomp. His moves are tight and his enthusiasm is infectious. Check out his interaction with the cosplayers at last summer's Anime Expo. The song is "Judas" by local band Imperative Reaction.
We're still two weeks away from Halloween, but Los Angeles has been jumping with party people dressed to impress. Need some costume inspiration? Check out these events you might have missed:
Josh "CuriousJosh" Reiss
Last Saturday, Josh "CuriousJosh" Reiss headed down to Jelly Roll's charity masquerade ball hosted by The Lady Tigra. Check out the slideshow here.
Colin Young-Wolff
Meanwhile, Colin Young-Wolff hit up Serendipity for ethereal costumes and acrobatics. Check out the slideshow here.
In seven years of throwing some of the hottest underground parties in town, Droid Behavior has managed to escape the inevitable visit from the fire marshal, something that even a lot of above-ground clubs can't claim. That all changed on Saturday night when the techno-loving crew celebrated the anniversary of its popular monthly bash, Interface.
Last year, the DJ crew International Pop Conspiracy came up with a novel idea, throw a monthly party focusing on the latest sounds from Japan. No one could have expected for Tune in Tokyo to become an instant hit, after all, music that isn't sung in English isn't exactly considered accessible in the US. Now, one year later, the Little Tokyo-based club night has it's own crowd of regulars, some of whom have even gone on to form bands together.
Sunday night at midnight, The Venture Bros. returns to Adult Swim for another season of mad scientist and supervillain misadventures. While we have heard bits and pieces about what to expect for the upcoming episodes at Comic Con, when LA Weekly caught up with show architects Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer by phone yesterday, the subject of the day was music. This seemed more than appropriate when chatting with two guys who developed a universe where a hapless villain reminisces about Danceteria, and Klaus Nomi appears as a henchman who can wreak havoc with his voice.
After grooving to La Roux's single "Bulletproof" more than a few times, we couldn't help but wonder what makes the synthpop duo's vocalist Elly Jackson hit the dance floor. She got back to LA Weekly with a sizable list of jams, which we've listed below. Check out La Roux Monday night at El Rey Theatre.
Stephanie Yanez (center) at Dear Stage in Akihabara
Anime convention regulars are probably readily familiar with Stephanie Yanez. Since winning the AX Idol contest at Anime Expo in 2004, the singer has traveled across the country performing cover songs of anime themes as well as her own material at conventions. Last August, Yanez had the chance to do what few Americans can, she performed as a cosplay idol in Japan's famed otaku (anime fanatic) district, Akihabara, singing the closing theme from the current hit series K-On, "Don't Say Lazy." We chatted with Yanez about the experience. You can see her play live tonight at the first anniversary of LA Jpop party Tune in Tokyo.
Ever get the urge to lace up your twenty-eye Docs, wrap a couple studded bracelets around your wrists and start stomping around your bedroom? When you do, make sure to blare these classic industrial dance club hits.
KMFDM "Godlike" (fan video with Xenosaga)
Thanks in part to its creative appropriation of a Slayer riff, KMFDM burned up dance floors in the early 1990s with "Godlike." One of the band's best loved tunes, "Godlike" is as metal as it is dance. Check out KMFDM live Friday night at Club Nokia.
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