Tag: BRAIDS

BRAIDS Announce Spring Tour, PGH Mr. Smalls 5/2 Release 2014 Video Trailer

by Alan D. Welding, posted in Announcement/News

Click Here To Watch “Spring Tour 2014” Video Trailer

Tour Dates

w/ Wye Oak:

05.02 – Millvale, PA – Mr. Small’s Theatre
05.03 – Lancaster, PA – Chameleon Club
05.05 – Philadelphia, PA – Union Transfer
05.06 – Washington, DC – 9:30 Club
05.07 – New York, NY – Webster Hall
05.09 – Boston, MA – Paradise
05.10 – Montreal, QC – Il Motore
05.11 – Toronto, ON – Horseshoe Tavern
05.13 – Chicago, IL – Metro
05.14 – Milwaukee, WI – Turner Hall
05.15 – Minneapolis, MN – Fine Line Music Cafe
05.16 – Omaha, NE – The Waiting Room
05.17 – Lawrence, KS – The Granada
05.18 – St, Louis, MO – Old Rock House
05.20 – Nashville, TN – Mercy Lounge
05.21 – Atlanta, GA – Terminal West

BIO

After having released their critically acclaimed debut Native Speaker  in 2011, and hot off the heels of their 12″ single In Kind // Amends, BRAIDS have returned with their new LP Flourish // Perish out August 20th on Arbutus Records.

Flourish // Perish showcases the strength of the band as a collective, and explores their burgeoning love for electronic music.  Here, the band brings their widely disparate strengths together to create a distinctive voice; the organic and complex rhythms dance and spar with sparsely decorative sounds, often fragmented and tampered. Interwoven amongst these threads is the layered voice of Standell-Preston, her engaging lyrics and human performance drawing the listener close.

After 18 months of touring in support of Native Speaker, along with the departure of a band member, the group secluded themselves in their Montreal studio for a year of writing and recording.  While Native Speaker was written in an organic and live environment, the group sought to explore a more introspective and electronic approach to songwriting.  Sonically, the songs from these sessions are delicate and tight, yet thoughtfully open up to the rich lushness reminiscent of their older material. Lyrically they are honest and vulnerable, demonstrating the group’s emotional growth and maturity since their last record.

With Flourish // Perish, BRAIDS marks an exciting new partnership with Montreal-based label Arbutus Records.

Links

BRAIDS Website
Facebook
Twitter
Album Order

BRAIDS Release KEXP Live Session Video + New “Untitled” Track

by Alan D. Welding, posted in Video

Click Here To Watch KEXP Live Session Video

After having released their critically acclaimed debut Native Speaker  in 2011, and hot off the heels of their 12″ single In Kind // Amends, BRAIDS have returned with their new LP Flourish // Perish out August 20th on Arbutus Records.

Flourish // Perish showcases the strength of the band as a collective, and explores their burgeoning love for electronic music.  Here, the band brings their widely disparate strengths together to create a distinctive voice; the organic and complex rhythms dance and spar with sparsely decorative sounds, often fragmented and tampered. Interwoven amongst these threads is the layered voice of Standell-Preston, her engaging lyrics and human performance drawing the listener close.

After 18 months of touring in support of Native Speaker, along with the departure of a band member, the group secluded themselves in their Montreal studio for a year of writing and recording.  While Native Speaker was written in an organic and live environment, the group sought to explore a more introspective and electronic approach to songwriting.  Sonically, the songs from these sessions are delicate and tight, yet thoughtfully open up to the rich lushness reminiscent of their older material. Lyrically they are honest and vulnerable, demonstrating the group’s emotional growth and maturity since their last record.

With Flourish // Perish, BRAIDS marks an exciting new partnership with Montreal-based label Arbutus Records.

Links

BRAIDS Website
Facebook
Twitter
Album Order

BRAIDS Stream 12″ In Kind // Amends On Pitchfork Advance

by Alan D. Welding, posted in Announcement/News

Click Here To Stream ‘In Kind // Amends’ On Pitchfork

 

Tour Dates
6/11 – Casa Del Popolo – Monreal, QC
6/13 – Arbutus Showcase @ NXNE – Toronto, CA
6/15 – Northside Festival @ Cameo Gallery – Brooklyn, NY

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After having released their critically acclaimed debut Native Speaker  in 2011, and hot off the heels of their 12″ single In Kind // Amends, BRAIDS have returned with their new LPFlourish // Perish out August 20th on Arbutus Records.

Flourish // Perish showcases the strength of the band as a collective, and explores their burgeoning love for electronic music.  Here, the band brings their widely disparate strengths together to create a distinctive voice; the organic and complex rhythms dance and spar with sparsely decorative sounds, often fragmented and tampered. Interwoven amongst these threads is the layered voice of Standell-Preston, her engaging lyrics and human performance drawing the listener close.

After 18 months of touring in support of Native Speaker, along with the departure of a band member, the group secluded themselves in their Montreal studio for a year of writing and recording.  While Native Speaker was written in an organic and live environment, the group sought to explore a more introspective and electronic approach to songwriting.  Sonically, the songs from these sessions are delicate and tight, yet thoughtfully open up to the rich lushness reminiscent of their older material. Lyrically they are honest and vulnerable, demonstrating the group’s emotional growth and maturity since their last record.

With Flourish // Perish, BRAIDS marks an exciting new partnership with Montreal-based label Arbutus Records.

Savannah Stopover Music Festival Announces Final Lineup + Schedule

by Alan D. Welding, posted in Event

Savannah Stopover’s 2013 Lineup Includes

of Montréal, The Whigs, Merchandise, Mac DeMarco, Ducktails, Jonathan Toubin’s Soul Clap & Dance Off, Dent May, Delicate Steve, Ambassadors,Turbo Fruits, Snowmine,The Last Bison, Ben Sollee, Ponderosa, Country Mice, Cheyenne Mize, Filligar, Bronze Radio Return, Royal Canoe, Sean Bones, Yip Deceiver, Levek, Calvin Love, Henry Wagons, You Won’t, Field Report, The People’s Temple, this mountain, Christopher Paul Stelling, Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires, William Tyler, Jacco Gardner, Mercies, Pree, Mobley, Chris Cohen, Shark?, Sun Club, The Wild Feathers, We Can’t Enjoy Ourselves, Chelsea Light Moving (Featuring Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, VietNam, The Coathangers, Alex Bleeker & The Freaks, PUJOL, The Suzan, Single Mothers, Hunters, Young Buffalo, The Dunwells, Daniel Ellsworth & The Great Lakes, Road Kill Ghost Choir, Moon King, Naomi Punk, Fine Peduncle, Blessed Feathers, Heyrocco, Little Tybee, Talk Normal, BRAIDS, Prince Rama, Diarrhea Planet, HAERTS, Kopecky Family Band, Leagues, Hott MT, Crystal Bright & The Silver Hands, Vensaire, Autumn Owls, End of America, Sun Country, Stop Light Observations, Colorfeels, PAN, Suburban Living, Beach Day, Swear & Shake, Les Racquet

Click Here For Full Schedule

Max Cooper Collaborates With BRAIDS To Release Conditions One EP

by Alan D. Welding, posted in Announcement/News

Click Here For Free Download Of Automaton APP On iTunes

Rising UK electronica star Max Cooper has collaborated with Canada’s intellectual art-rockers BRAIDS on a two-part EP named CONDITIONS ONE. The first of a set of upcoming releases from Cooper examining the human condition, CONDITIONS ONE will be the first release on new live-electronica label FIELDS and is accompanied by evocative and indelicate remixes by hotly tipped northern UK acts Ghosting Season and D/R/U/G/S, as well as an already-released free iPhone app Automaton that previewed one track of the EP.

The human condition is a well-examined idea – but as an ex-genetics researcher with a PhD, Cooper takes a somewhat aslant look at humanity with the two collaborations. “Pleasures,” he says, “is just that – an attempt to write something purely pleasurable and beautiful. But Automaton is darker – an attempt to show how humans are essentially deterministic, trapped in a set of predictable reactions to their environment, their upbringing, their lives”.

All members of BRAIDS sing, and the tracks on the CONDITIONS EP combine vocal lines, melodies and individual vocal sounds from every song on BRAIDS’ most recent album, Native Speaker – both as “proper vocals”, and or ethereal, pure sound.

BRAIDS
Hugely successful with both critics and touring audiences, BRAIDS’ experimental, poppy debut Native Speaker was described as “mesmerizing and vertiginous as desire can be” by the New York Times, “equally tactile and dissolute, cerebral and surreal” by Pitchfork and shortlisted for Canada’s Polaris Prize. Art students from Calgary, Canada, the band were on tour before they had even written the drum tracks for their debut album, and they are currently writing its followup in Montreal, for release in 2013.

MAX COOPER
… is known in Europe for three things: huge festival sets that swing freely between delicate live electronica and abrasive techo glee; his stark, emotional reworks of acts such as multi-million selling soundtrack composer Michael Nyman (Gattaca, the Piano), Hot Chip, Nils Frahm and Olafur Arnalds, and the downtempo classic Hayling by FC Kahuna and Swedish songstress Hafdis Huld; and for his scientific background, which has strongly influenced his 50+ original tracks and remixes as well as the videos he commissions to accompany his work. He has been voted one of the top 100 DJs worldwide by canonical techno and electronica blog Resident Advisor, with his track The End of Reason compared to Philip Glass, Gorecki and Aphex Twin.

Until recently, Cooper worked as a genetics researcher for University College, London while making and touring his music on weekends and at night. He only retired his first, more sober science career in 2010.

BRAIDS Announces 3 CMJ Shows

by Alan D. Welding, posted in Event

Wed. 10/17, 6pm – Pianos
Tell All Your Friends Party

Fri. 10/19, 4pm – Public Assembly
Brooklyn Vegan Party

Sat. 10/20, 10pm – Bowery Ballroom
With Wild Nothing + Weekend

Braids, the Canadian experimental pop group who released Native Speaker in 2011, have reinvented themselves in the making of their second full length. Countless late-night drives have steered their attention towards new techno and house genres, deepening their appreciation of electronic based music. This curiosity has taken Braids from the rich, effects laden balance of Native Speaker to the inevitable point of a primarily electronic sound. Years spent as a live band only tightens the group further during this shift. As they head out in anticipation of their next album – due sometime in 2013 – their new songs will be played, fully live, in an exciting time in music as the gap between real and synthetic narrows, leaving room only for the pure energy driving the performance.

Blue Hawaii Premieres Two Tracks

by Alan D. Welding, posted in Streaming

Click Here To Listen To “In Two” And “In Two II” On Gorilla vs. Bear

Blue Hawaii, Arbutus Records and many of their Montreal counter-parts all began with the same breath in early 2010. To date they’ve released an 8 song EP: in May of that year, Blooming Summer (Arbutus Records 2010) was recorded following the pair’s travels in Central America. It frames a time of warmth and novelty, featuring dense female harmonies, tape saturated synths, guitars and drum machines. Eventually Ra– returned to her role in BRAIDS, touring constantly, while Ag–moved to Europe, treading deeper into dance music, electronics, and production.

The two decided to make Untogether in 2012; they began recording on New Years Day in Vancouver and intermittently worked on the project until summer broke in Montreal. The music followed their winter in Canada, it became colder, more introspective. It again captured a time and place, but instead of a dense saturation of love and excitement, this record reflects the vast world of self-awareness and delicacy. It takes for its subject the question of belonging, despite overwhelming space.

Musically, the production on the album is more spacious and physically it was recorded in separation. Despite this, it belongs together in its final form. It demonstrates successful creative process in a pair who composed apart, and in doing so it is a meditation on communication: how technology and art influence modern human relationships. It contains the vast space of two years passing, including watching their Montreal scene change as some launched into international success and others turned deeper inwards. Here, the album finds the conflict of separation/belonging to one’s self and community.

The duo notice that throughout the changing social and personal landscape which is one’s twenties, these divided notions and people somehow stay together. Even the name Blue Hawaii suggests a kind of melancholic, jaded paradise, but a paradise afterall. It is because – or perhaps in spite of – these disjointed intersections that the record is called Untogether.

Catch Blue Hawaii play this year at CMJ.

Tell All Your Friends CMJ Showcase

by Alan D. Welding, posted in Event

Wednesday 10/17 @ Pianos, 12-7 pm
CMJ 2012.
PIANOS NYC.
2 floors of FREE FUN.

SET TIMES:

DOWNSTAIRS

1pm – Zulu Pearls
2pm – Bowery Riots
3pm – Jon DeRosa
4pm – Solid Gold
5pm – Team Spirit
6pm – BRAIDS

UPSTAIRS

12:30pm – Correatown
1:30pm – Blackbird Blackbird
2:30pm – Maus Haus
3:30pm – Filligar
4:30pm – Triple Hex
5:30pm – Wooden Indian Burial Ground

Blue Hawaii Announce Sophomore LP ‘Untogether’

by Alan D. Welding, posted in Announcement/News

Blue Hawaii, Arbutus Records and many of their Montreal counter-parts all began with the same breath in early 2010. To date they’ve released an 8 song EP: in May of that year, Blooming Summer (Arbutus Records 2010) was recorded following the pair’s travels in Central America. It frames a time of warmth and novelty, featuring dense female harmonies, tape saturated synths, guitars and drum machines. Eventually Ra– returned to her role in BRAIDS, touring constantly, while Ag–moved to Europe, treading deeper into dance music, electronics, and production.

The two decided to make Untogether in 2012; they began recording on New Years Day in Vancouver and intermittently worked on the project until summer broke in Montreal. The music followed their winter in Canada, it became colder, more introspective. It again captured a time and place, but instead of a dense saturation of love and excitement, this record reflects the vast world of self-awareness and delicacy. It takes for its subject the question of belonging, despite overwhelming space.

Musically, the production on the album is more spacious and physically it was recorded in separation. Despite this, it belongs together in its final form. It demonstrates successful creative process in a pair who composed apart, and in doing so it is a meditation on communication: how technology and art influence modern human relationships. It contains the vast space of two years passing, including watching their Montreal scene change as some launched into international success and others turned deeper inwards. Here, the album finds the conflict of separation/belonging to one’s self and community.

The duo notice that throughout the changing social and personal landscape which is one’s twenties, these divided notions and people somehow stay together. Even the name Blue Hawaii suggests a kind of melancholic, jaded paradise, but a paradise afterall. It is because – or perhaps in spite of – these disjointed intersections that the record is called Untogether.

Catch Blue Hawaii play this year at CMJ.

CMJ Dates

Tuesday 10/16
Portals Showcase @ Pianos

Thursday 10/18
Sam Mickens’ Party @ Bowery Electric

Friday 10/19
M for Montreal @ Arlene’s Grocery

Saturday 10/20
POP smoked meat showcase @ Cameo Gallery

Saturday 10/20
Arbutus @ Death By Audio