Month: June 2011

MP3 At 3PM: Male Bonding

Post author By MAGNET Staff
Post date June 26, 2011

On August 30, Sub Pop is issuing Endless Now, the second album from Male Bonding. The 12-track, 36-minute LP is the follow-up to the London trio’s debut, Nothing Hurts, which came out last year. It’s hard to believe that it’s only been three years since Male Bonding played its first gig, given how good these guys are. The band recorded Endless Now at Dreamland Recording Studio in Woodstock, N.Y., with John Angello (Kurt Vile, Thurston Moore, Dinosaur Jr, et al) before heading to Brooklyn to mix. Download album track “Bones” below.

“Bones” (download):
https://magnetmagazine.com/audio/Bones.mp3

NEWS

In The News: Nirvana, Against Me!, Bangles, Erasure, Blitzen Trapper, Sugar, Glen Campbell And More

Post author By MAGNET Staff
Post date June 26, 2011

On September 27, Universal Music Enterprises celebrates the 20th anniversary of Nirvana‘s Nevermind with a four-CD/one-DVD deluxe edition of the culture-changing album. The CDs include unreleased recordings, rarities, b-sides, BBC appearances, alternative mixes and live recordings; the DVD features a complete unreleased concert … MAGNET fave Against Me! is reissuing its fifth album, last year’s White Crosses, on July 26 via its brand new Total Treble Music label. The 28-track, two-part, double-CD set features the original 10 songs and four bonus tunes as well as 14 alternate versions and unreleased tracks. The band’s next studio record will also come out via Total Treble Music … On September 13, the Bangles will release their first album of new music in eight years: Sweetheart Of The Sun (Model Music Group) … Erasure returns this fall with Tomorrow’s World (Mute), the synth-pop band’s first album in almost half a decade. A 25-date U.S. tour supporting the Frankmusik-produced LP kicks off August 31 in Tampa … On September 13, Sub Pop will release American Goldwing, the new album by Blitzen Trapper. A North American tour starts July 19 in Salt Lake City … The Ryko label has remastered and reissued Sugar‘s 1992 masterpiece Copper Blue, releasing it on vinyl for the first time. Frontman Bob Mould supervised the reissue, and the likes of Ben Gibbard (Death Cab For Cutie) and Paul Banks (Interpol) contributed liner notes … Guy Clark is releasing live album Songs And Stories (Dualtone) on August 16. The 23-track LP was recorded at the Belcourt Theatre in Nashville … Sadly, the legendary Glen Campbell was recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, but he is wrapping up his half century in the music biz with a new album and a farewell tour. The LP, Ghost On The Canvas (out August 30 via Surfdog), features songs written by the likes of Robert Pollard, Paul Westerberg, Jakob Dylan and Teddy Thompson and a band consisting of Chris Isaak, Dick Dale, Billy Corgan, Brian Setzer, Rick Nielsen, Roger Manning, the Dandy Warhols and more … Warren Zanes‘ third solo album, I Want To Move Out In The Daylight, is out July 26 via Ella’s Arms.

GUEST EDITOR

From The Desk Of Amor De Días’ Alasdair Maclean: King Soly

Post author By MAGNET Staff
Post date June 26, 2011

Amor de Días—the duo of Alasdair Maclean (Clientele) and Lupe Núñez-Fernández (Pipas)—just released debut album Street Of The Love Of Days via Merge. (Those of you who speak Spanish know that the band’s moniker translates to “love of days,” hence the album title.) Maclean and Núñez-Fernández worked on the 15-track LP for more than three years, and it features guest spots by the likes of Louis Philippe, Damon & Naomi, Gary Olson (Ladybug Transistor) and Danny Manners. Maclean and Núñez-Fernández will also be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Q&A with them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVIosJmR6n8

Maclean: Dubstep is probably the most talked about British electronic music style of the last decade, to the extent that it’s on the verge of becoming a joke here in the U.K. It’s pretty much everywhere. People chuckle as they tell tales of their clueless mates who were in nu-metal bands and are now “dubstep producers.” This is exactly the moment, eight years too late, that people like me prick their ears up and get interested. Funnily enough, back in my youth, as well as listening to dusty records from the ’60s, I liked drum ‘n’ bass records by people like Ray Keith and Dead Dred, who, as I understand it, are now seen as the fathers of dubstep. Out of the people I’ve heard, Burial is great, but my favourite is King Soly. “Tamil Dub” and “Wicked King Of Persia” are wonderful tracks. The cheesy dialogue samples get on my nerves a bit, but the sheer, slow heaviness and the space is extraordinary. It’s my tip for the top (eight years too late).

VIDEOS

Film At 11: The Bell

Post author By MAGNET Staff
Post date June 25, 2011

The three members of the Bell are spread out over the Swedish cities of Stockholm and Malmo, so when it came to making sophomore album Great Heat, the band was forced to do it the new-fashioned way: via email and Skype. This digital setup worked well for the trio—until it came time to sequence the album. Says multi-instrumentalist Nicklas Nilsson, “I guess we should have had some more calls or a meeting to clear things more easy. A couple of days into the process, everything went chaos. We rapidly cycled through stages of consensus to massive conflicts. Beasts from a biblical hell took turns in throwing series of harsh words at each other.” Luckily, the band worked out its differences, and the LP, the follow-up to 2007’s Make Some Quiet, came out earlier this year via the Badman label. Watch the video for Great Heat‘s second single, “Whatever Did You Say?” below.

GUEST EDITOR

From The Desk Of Amor De Días’ Lupe Núñez-Fernández: “The Natural History Of Selborne”

Post author By MAGNET Staff
Post date June 25, 2011

Núñez-Fernández: I first learned of Gilbert White through Alasdair, who took me to White’s house in Hampshire a few years ago. The Natural History Of Selborne, his most famous work, is an account of his daily observations of the happenings in his backyard, which sort of set the foundations for the work of modern naturalists everywhere. His use of the scientific method helped dispel myths and beliefs around plant and animal life. But even if you’re not a gardener, there is something really pleasurable and inspiring about his prose and the things he selects to write about, an inherent enveloping rhythm like the kind you can find in earlier “books of days.” “Today the swallows came back to the hedgerow”; “there was a pheasant in the zig-zag path this afternoon”; “men cut their meadows.” Day by day, year by year, season after season, this is a record of a life quietly spent marveling and in awe of the experimental potential of everyday actions. (Never mind the soundness of some of his attempts, like growing watermelons in England or timing how long his poor tortoise Timothy could stand under water.) Even if just passing through London, a visit to his Selborne orchard is well worth a detour.

Video after the jump.