Latest tour dates listed below as well.

By Blurt Staff

Death Cab for Cutie just announced the impending release of their "KEYS AND CODES REMIX EP," due Nov. 22 on Atlantic, The collection features seven new remixed tracks from the band's latest album, "CODES AND KEYS."

Beginning today, the band will reveal one remix every week leading up to the EP's release on Tuesday, November 22nd.  The first remix, "Doors Unlocked and Open" by Australian electronic band Cut Copy, premiered this morning:

KEYS and CODES Remix EP by deathcabforcutie

Tour Dates:

10/11 - Austin, TX - Austin Music Hall
10/14 - Pomona, CA - The Fox Theatre
10/15 - Santa Barbara, CA - Santa Barbara Bowl
10/16 - San Francisco, CA - Treasure Island Music Festival
10/18 - Boise, ID - Taco Bell Arena
10/20 - Portland, OR - Portland Memorial Coliseum
10/21 - Vancouver, BC - Rogers Arena
10/22 - Seattle, WA - Key Arena at Seattle Center
11/11 - Lubeck, DE - Rolling Stone Weekender (Festival)
11/12 - Luxembourg City, LU - den Atelier
11/13 - Cologne, DE - E Werk
11/16 - London, UK - Hammersmith Apollo
11/17 - Leeds, UK - Leeds Academy
11/18 - Birmingham, UK - Birmingham Ballroom
11/19 - Glasgow, UK - Glasgow Academy

The northern border, that is...


By Blurt Staff


Click over to James McMurtry's new "Wasteland Bait & Tackle" blog we posted this morning at BLURT - our fave Texan holds forth this time around on his experiences crossing back and forth between the U.S. and Canada, and in particular the differences between what it was like in 1992 compared to the enhanced security conscious mindset of today.


Writes McMurtry, "The Canadians are alarmed, to say the least. Apparently, we now have gun boats on the Great Lakes, drones and Blackhawk helicopters patrolling the land border. There's talk of building a fence or perhaps even a wall. What terrible threat is coming at us from Canada, I must ask? And how will we get enough Mexican Nationals to the Canadian border to build a wall? Canadians don't sneak into our country. They're doing pretty well up there, by the look of the place..."


Click on the link above to read the entire entry.

More skronk than you can shake a distortion pedal at...

By Fred Mills

It was uttered: "The Color of Noise will be a story of music and art, and how the keen musical tastes, and ultra graphic design sense of one independent record label owner brought to the world the sights and sounds that helped to create and influence future musical genres while humbly kicking the crap out of the rock underground!"

Gotta be none other than AmRep - that's Amphetamine Reptile Records to YOU, pal - and the mighty Haze, aka Tom Hazelmyer, who shepherded the Minneapolis-based indie label starting around 1986 and well into the ‘90s. AmRep issued scores of records, including many now-rare, eBay-worthy 45s by the skronky, noisy, post-punk likes of Surgery, God Bullies, Helmet, Unsane, Vertigo, Melvins and Hazelmyer's own combo Halo of Flies, and although he finally closed the label down around 1998 he's continued to operate as a visual artist and around the periphery of music.

So The Color Of Noise aims to document the label's trajectory and is in the process of accumulating archival footage and photos - filmmakers Eric Robel and Michael Dimmitt are actively seeking out content in any format, whether VHS or Super 8, for consideration, and they mention in particular the following artists would be great for inclusion: Boss Hog (89'-92' lineup), Chokebore, Cosmic Psychos, God Bullies, Guzzard, Halo of Flies, Hammerhead, Hedonists, Helios Creed, Helmet, Killdozer (pre-90'), King Snake Roost, Lollipop, Love 666, Lubricated Goat (pre-91'), Mama Tick, The Melvins, Mudhoney, Nashville Pussy (97'-2000 lineup), Servotron, Surgery, Supernova, Tad, Tar, The Cows, The Thrown Ups, The U-Men, Today Is The Day, Unsane, Vertigo, Otto's Chemical Lounge, Toadlochen, Billy Childish.

They're also interested in talking to people who might have been involved with the label and related scene - ex-employees, band members, poster artists, etc. You can get more details and track the film's progress at the official blog.

There's also a preliminary video trailer posted at TheColorOfNoise.com well worth checking out.

Grand prize includes tickets to NYC show.

By Blurt Staff

Matthew Sweet is kicking off his 20^th Anniversary Tour, playing all the faves as well as his classic album Girlfriend in its entirety - even the bonus tracks - with his crack band of Sweet-heads, the veteran Ric Menck-Paul Chastain rhythm section plus Dennis Taylor on guitar. On Oct. 31, Nov. 1 and Nov. 2 the tour hits NYC, and in honor of that, we've got a chance for you to win fabulous prizes. Yes, we said FABULOUS PRIZES.

Go to the BLURT Contest Page and fill out the form for your chance to be one of our winners. The prizes are:

*Grand Prize: 2 NYC Tickets, 20th Anniversary Tour Bundle + T-Shirt +  Vinyl (Signed) (Shows in NYC are Oct 31, Nov 1 & 2)

*1st Prize: 20th Anniversary Tour Bundle, excluding tickets (VIP Laminate, Poster, Early Venue Access, Soundcheck Party with Matthew Meet and Greet, digital copy of Modern Art)

*2nd Prize: Signed Vinyl

*3rd Prize: Signed CD

*4th Prize: T-Shirt

Meanwhile, check out our freewheeling interview with Sweet elsewhere on the BLURT site - it was conducted recently by Contributing Editor Lee Zimmerman. The two mutual power pop fans discuss Sweet's new album Modern Art, the reasoning behind the Girlfriend performances, the art of studio recording in the modern era, Sweet's pal Fred Armisen (who guests on the album), and loads more. Also, be watching for issue #11 of BLURT, hitting newsstands in mid-November - we have a special Sweet feature appearing in that as well.

Out this week on One Little Indian/Nonesuch, it's a delicate and tactile treat.

By A.D. Amorosi

Get beyond recent solo efforts like the glacial Volta and throat warbling Medula. Put aside the app chatter, the details of her new album's delays and the talk of her cold fusion of the warmly natural and the coolly scientific Bjork's softly epic Biophilia is a delicate and highly tactile treat, a unique gem of innovation (pipe organs driven by computers, the mallet-tickled gameleste) and gentle real soul whose breathy endearing heights Bjork hasn't touched in a minute.

Not as a composer, a lyricist or even as a vocalist has she sounded so exceptionally grand yet winsomely intimate. While the temperate "Hollow" threatens to swallow the tiny voiced Icelandic artist in its torrid tornado's vortex, she breaks through with wondrous curiosity and passion in the dippy funeral "Cosmogony" as "heaven's bodies whirl around me." Throughout "Mutual Core," the funeral continues as a churchy organ groove lays still and bubbling only to find itself struck by Gatling gun rhythms and a Bjork vocal so raw and unbound it stops the show with its epiphanies.

Lyrically, too, Bjork is at her most compelling, talking up the sensual potency of dread that guides  "Virus" ("I adapt, contagious, you open up, say welcome") and cuttingly enunciating sexuality's boldness on "Thunderbolt"  ("My romantic gene is dominant and it hungers for union"). Near perfection.

Little bit of hip-hop, little bit of darkwave, whole lotta avant-garde.

By Blurt Staff

Vex Ruffin's debut EP, Crash Course, hit the BLURT mail slot this weekend and we've been spinning it nonstop ever since. Joy Division goes hip-hop? Just maybe... So we were doubly chuffed to get the video for key track "I'm Creative" today. Check it out:

Here's the deal from Ruffin's label, Stones Throw; the EP arrives in stores later this month. He's got a full-length in the works for 2012.

"In high school," Vex Ruffin recalls, "my favorites were The Cure and DMX." It's clear the self-taught LA musician plays by nobody's rules but his own. In fact, it's easy to picture Vex alternately brooding to '80s New Wave goth and bobbing his head to Ruff Ryders radio rap in his formative years. His lo-fi beatscapes, punctuated by moody vocals, combine a Pretty In Pink-era pop sensibility with a healthy dose of raw noise.

Maybe that's what grabbed Stones Throw label owner Peanut Butter Wolf when Vex's demo arrived in the mail. "It was kind of a fluke that I listened," Wolf admits. "I called the number on the CD, and Vex thought I was his friend playing a practical joke." But Wolf was dead serious, and Vex is the first and only artist signed to Stones Throw on the strength of an unsolicited demo. Meanwhile, the artist also known as Beastmaster emerges from his bedroom occasionally to electrify crowds at Southern California venues like The Smell, ground zero for LA's avant-garde music scene.

Macabre twist via Twitter.

By Blurt Staff

Alt-rock fans, particularly those of Weezer, were saddened this weekend do learn that a former bassist, Mikey Welsh, has died. According to Chicago police his body was discovered Saturday afternoon at the Raffaello Hotel by hotel staff; the cause of death will not be determined until toxicology tests are completed, but a drug overdose is being floated by various media sources. Welsh was 40 years old and leaves behind a wife and two sons.

As the media is also reporting, there's a macabre twist to all this: apparently, on Sept. 26, Welsh tweeted of a dream foreshadowing:

@MikeyWelsh71 dreamt i died in chicago next weekend (heart attack in my sleep). need to write my will today.

And then an addendum:

@MikeyWelsh 71 @JVittitow correction - the weekend after next

In a slightly creepy move, an individual (mia) has since taken over Welsh's Twitter account and is making occasional tweets, including details about a "makeshift memorial" and more.

Welsh was a minor player in the greater Weezer saga, only appearing in the lineup briefly, from 1998 to 2001, and plahing on only one of their albums, 2001's self-titled release. He ultimately left the band for reasons related to a nervous breakdown, but following a suicide attempt, he got his act together and became a visual artist and moved to Burlington, Vermont.

Weezer posted to the band website today, "When he emerged from his nervous breakdown that spelled his exit from the rock ‘n' roll world, he took on a new role as an astonishing and pure visual artist. It was a glorious flowering of a talent he always possessed, but he had chosen to rock out first, paint later."

Ambitious archival series from Knitting Factory commences in November.

By Blurt Staff

Knitting Factory Records - home to all things Fela Kuti, natch - is set to re-release of four long out-of-print albums by Nigerian twins the Lijadu Sisters, Taiwo and Kehinde. The sisters, cousins of Fela, were a rarity in Nigeria. Not only were they female in an industry dominated by male artists but they wrote their own material, which was often political and always topical. Recorded at the famed Decca studios in Lagos, Nigeria, the hotbed of the Nigerian music scene at that time, the albums combine Afrobeat, Western and UK pop music and reggae, with the sisters singing in both English and Yoruba.  

The releases are as follows:

Danger  (1976) - November 8, 2011
Mother Africa  (1977) - 1st quarter 2012
Sunshine (1978)  - 2nd quarter 2012
Horizon Unlimited (1979) - 3rd quarter 2012   

Long out of print and prized by collectors, these albums have never before been available on CD or digitally; they'll also be available on vinyl and all formats will include the original artwork. Remastered from recordings taken off the original vinyl LPs (the tapes have long been lost), these recordings sound as urgent and timely today as they did set against the turbulent scene of Nigeria in the '70s.    

The series will kick off with Danger on November 8, 2011; the Lijadu Sisters' first release on the Afrodisia label.  Danger is as funky and mellifluous as it gets, with the twins' gorgeous harmonies underpinned by a solid Afro-rock beat and framed by multi-instrumentalist Biddy Wright's funky organ and guitar work. Danger has a vibe of uplifting positivity which would be a feature of all four of the Lijadu Sisters' Afrodisia albums.   

Lyrically, most of the songs address social and political issues, sometimes directly, sometimes through metaphor and allusion. "Danger," the uptempo opener and title track, is on one level about a "dangerous lover." But in the wider context of the times - with the police and army's abuses of power running rampant and otherwise unchecked (Fela Kuti's eviscerating Zombie  was also released in 1976) - it serves as a glimpse of life on the edge in Nigeria during those turbulent political years.   

The reason the Lijadu Sisters aren't well known today, except by collectors, is that Kehinde, while the duo was touring North America with King Sunny Ade in 1980, suffered a severe spinal injury that has kept them out of the public eye until now.  They're living in NYC and have been very hands on with the project, working with Knitting Factory Records to make these albums available again. The sisters are also planning select shows timed around these releases; stay tuned for updates. 

The Lijadu Sisters were featured in Konkombé, British director Jeremy Marre's 1979 film on the Nigerian pop scene and were a hit in the '80s on the UK television show, The Tube. Check out this clip of The Lijadu Sisters at Decca Studio in Lagos in the '70s:

Intriguing project arrives Dec. 6 from the RAD label...

By Blurt Staff

Breathe Owl Breathe have always been storytellers. It only makes sense that they would spin a pair of tales that people of all ages could cherish together; stories and songs so simple and poignant in their message that adults and children alike will find moments and melodies that resonate for them.

A combination of art, music, and literature, The Listeners / These Train Tracks is a statement about the artist, a band, and the desire to make things that sound nice, look good, and feel real. The Listeners / These Train Tracks is close to a three-year work in progress, created almost entirely by artist/musician Micah Middaugh of Breathe Owl Breathe inside the confines of Cavern Lantern Wonder Welding in the Jordan River Valley, MI.  This is the first release from the band since joining the newly reformed RAD label, which has been releasing records, skateboards, and t-shirts since 2007, and will release The Listeners / These Train Tracks on December 6th.

After years of writing children's books in single editions, Micah has crafted two stories in a single canvas-covered volume that reads from the outside covers inward, ending at the center. And here, in the middle of The Listeners / These Train Tracks, slipped between a copper block printed sleeve hand cranked by Micah and book artist, Chad Pastotnik, are two new Breathe Owl Breathe songs pressed to black 70 gram 7" vinyl.  Every single cover, page, sleeve, and block was created and printed in Michigan.

It's a book, it's a record, it's a wonderful piece of art to look at, listen to, and hold in your hands as often as you'd like.

October 4 at The Iron Horse brought an evening of indigenous Malian blues from the guitar master.

Text & Photos By Jennifer Kelly

Intricate, staccato sounds drift out onto the street on a warm, October night, the plink of something like banjo pattering against ringing lattice work of guitar and an insistent percussive sound halfway between slap and pop bass and blues guitar. It's hard to believe that there aren't any drums in play, as Malian guitarist Sidi Touré holds court, flanked by two musicians, the one on his left Jambala Maiga, playing a small gourd-shaped instrument called a kuntigui, the one on his left, Douma Maiga, a pair of elongated one- and two-stringed kurbus, and he, in the middle, wielding a traditional guitar, though one bent to some strange, evocative desert sounds.

 All three instruments are mic'd, with pick-ups placed directly on the body of the instruments, yet the effect is decidedly low-tech. Jambala Maiga tunes by pulling a frayed rattan cord at the top of neck of his instrument. When it's Douma Maiga's turn to tune, Touré simply sings him a phrase, and he matches his notes to the vocal line.

Sidi Touré is here from halfway around the world, bringing the dry desert blues of the Sahel to this New England college town. "I hope he tells some stories," I say to my husband on the drive down. "You don't get to sit down with a guy from Mali every day. I hope he talks a little bit between songs.

I get my wish, sort of, as Touré uses the breaks between songs to talk about music and politics, the end of forced marriage in Mali, his own and countryman Ali Farka Toure's relationship to the American blues, and the necessity and pleasure of nurturing trees in his desert homeland, among other things. At least, that's what I think he's talking about. He speaks in a rapid French, the colonial language of Mali, and my three years of high school French class will only provide the barest outlines, not the details, of his commentary. "Le monde a besoin de patience," he observes, during the very first break, and indeed, yes, but also better language skills.

Still, Touré's smile is infectious and he manages, with difficulty, to communicate sufficiently to get his audience to sing along. "Cava?" sings Jambala Maiga, in a rough, wavering voice that is sandpapery next to Touré's smoother, more carrying tone. And, finally, after some confusion ("Are we really supposed to be singing?"), we answer "Cava" and more or less in tune. This call and response is at the heart of his music, whether conveyed in a vocal back and forth between Touré and his audience, Touré and his fellow singer, or in the response of one instrument to another. The three musicians never stop listening to one another, locking into a hypnotic groove where one ventures an idea, the others frame and elaborate on it. They move together, too, sometimes, shuffling back and forth on the stage in a restless slow rhythm, and at other times, face each other, to communicate with eyes and face and body movements, as well as music.

The sound of Touré's band is pointillistic, its riffs and phrases made of intersecting pings and plucks and bumps, yet his voice carries over all this in a serenity that seems effortless, his long sustained tones implying endless distances, solitude and calm acceptance of whatever life brings. About midway through the program, Touré talks, for a few minutes about the blues, a tradition separated from his own by time and geography, yet curiously linked. And then, having made his connection with the blues (or perhaps having disclaimed it), he and his band launched into the two or three most blues sounding songs of the night, Douma coming up front to bang out sway-backed, caravan rhythms on a two-stringed kurbu, the heat-stroke haze of Touré's picking becoming increasingly hallucinatory. The piece, not on this year's #SahelFolk# as far as I can tell, has a little of Muddy Waters' incantatory drive, a bit of Otis Redding's flowery ornamentation around the vocals. Touré's vocals are wordless, fluttering variations on breath and tone. "Aah-ahh," he murmurs, against a relentless, slow-kicking beat, "Ah-ah ah."

The evening closesé with an encore of "Taray Kongo," the long, lovely highlight of Touré's Sahel Folk. Jambala Maiga took the lead, his raspy, weathered voice striking out over the crowd, singing the long, looping phrases, and Touré, beside him, locking them down with a short, murmured response. He had, doubtless, explained exactly what the song was about and what it meant to him beforehand (Did I hear, "This is my ‘Claire de Lune,' or was that my imagination?), but the song spoke its own language and got through just fine without translation.