skinny wolves
Well-Known Member
Skinny Wolves in association with Darklight 2010 presents
XIU XIU (Usa, Kill Rock Stars)
FORMER GHOSTS (Usa, Upset the Rhythm)
& special guests
Friday 29th October
The Grand Social, (formerly Pravda)
Doors 8pm
Tickets €15 available from http://www.tickets.ie/skinnywolves & City Discs
(Tickets are selling real quick, so get them now. Limited capacity, etc....)
-----------
XIU XIU
http://www.myspace.com/xiuxiuforlife
Read almost any piece about Xiu Xiu and you'll see words like 'harsh' or 'brutal' — the same words that appear before 'truth' when an unwavering eye is turned on any intimate detail of our lives. Fair descriptions of the themes central to the music, they sit incongruous to the refined, intricate, and beautiful approach taken in crafting the twelve tracks on Xiu Xiu's new album Dear God, I Hate Myself.
Stewart is joined by new full-time band member Angela Seo on piano, synth, and drum programming; with production handled by Jamie and Deerhoof's Greg Saunier. Together they've crafted a fully grown sound for Dear God, I Hate Myself with elements from goth and pop that are expertly performed by a crop of brilliant musicians. Saunier himself plays on much of the record as does Ches Smith (John Zorn, Terry Riley, Marc Ribot) who supplies timpani, conga and moog along with a broad range of other instrumentation. Deerhoof's John Dieterich is all over a rendition of the traditional folk song “Cumberland Gap” and Xiu Xiu is even joined by the Immaculata Catholic School Orchestra in Stewart's ode to heartbreak and healing, “This Too Shall Pass Away (for Freddy).” The title track, one of four songs done primarily on a Nintendo DS, explores the relationship between faith and despair with a layer of commentary provided by the bizarre sounds of the music itself.
Each new Xiu Xiu release has evolved alongside the lives of Jamie Stewart and company. On this record you'll find more intensity and introspection than ever before, but sonically and lyrically it continues to move forward with a subtly new perspective — hyper-focussed yet aware of a larger, external picture unfolding. The pace of the record grips you, the music offers layers of detail, and the themes focus on not just the past or stark present but hint towards vespers of the future as well. Dear God, I Hate Myself will challenge you and force you to look inside yourself, but only after you get lost in the music. It's passionate, it's energetic, and it affects you.
Dear God, I Hate Myself is a beautiful piece of humanist art. It's an important addition to the growing body of intelligent music from Xiu Xiu. And it's a brilliant gothic pop record that can stand next to anything.
http://pitchfork.com/artists/4683-xiu-xiu/
-------------------------
FORMER GHOSTS
http://www.myspace.com/formerghostssleep
"Former Ghosts is a new synthpop project from Freddy Ruppert, formerly of This Song Is a Mess But So Am I. The band is also comprised of Xiu Xiu’s Jamie Stewart and Zola Jesus’ Nika Roza. Ruppert is the lead songwriter on this brutally gloomy, Joy Division-esque project. The title of the debut, Fleurs, is a reference to the white-flowered iris (Iris germanica). " - lastfm
About the forthcoming NEW LOVE LP from Former Ghosts:
Music as the relief, yet also the reminder of the need for relief. If only there were some word that meant both cure and poison. 'New Love.' It's two words, but one title. New love is a cure for the heartbreak and jealousy of the past, but a beginning to a new obsession - the search to replace the old love.
This obsessive search radiates through the entire album. Freddy Ruppert's newest collaborative project is as much an emotional obsession as it is an obsession with sound. The new album is poppier, cleaner, more seductive, sweet, charming, but more bitter. The claustrophobic reverb from the last album has been replaced. The syrupy, entangling wash of sound has been hollowed out and exploded in size.
'New Love.' listens hollow, empty, endless. Like a spacious landscape, frightening in it's expansiveness. This landscape is populated at times sparsely, and at times densely, with a broader use of sounds - guitars, treated piano, glitched out rhythms and beats. The entire sonic experience neurotically crafted - an entire world hand-carved with complete surgical control over every sound.
Throughout the album, Ruppert's vocals feel pressed against you, almost uncomfortably close. And yet at the same time, you're left alone for a larger portion of the album. No longer is a voice constantly guiding you through the cacophony. Your sad, frantic companions leave you alone in shallow depressions that litter the album. Spaces between songs, spaces within songs, all harboring marshy pockets of sound. Small bogs, marring the poppier expanses of what seem like exuberant or triumphant anthems and fanfare.
"Chin Up" is an excellent example of this duality which seems to mimic the mood swings of frustration and relief in extended heartbreak. Roza Danilova's vocals play somewhat like Cyndi Lauper if she were doing the soundtrack to a suicidal, degenerate band of Goonies.
But as bleak and expansive as the new album is, the engine that propels it forward is obsession - an obsession over loss of love, over jealousy, over Ruppert's inability to move on from the past - and not simply a loss of love, but a love of loss. The vast sense of space in the album doubles the feeling of being on the outside of a relationship - of being the third unrequited member of a romance between a couple oblivious to your heartbreak - outside the feelings of someone who has, long ago, fallen out of love with you.
Maybe, in this way, the female collaborators on the album - Nika Roza Danilova of Zola Jesus and first-timer Yasmine Kittles of Tearist - materialise more as simulations, stand-ins or memories of lost loves than as simple musical partners. Roza Danilova's intense, operatic style and Kittles' softer, coquettish beckoning surround Ruppert as the core, writhing, masculine presence in an open, chaotic album.
Jamie Stewart of Xiu Xiu. He's in there. Sneaking around. You'll find him. Adding percussion, wrap-around synths, extra-textures. Another male voice, most noticeably on the album's solid pop number "New Orleans". Just like new love, "New Orleans" offers the same yearning for the new, the change, that will turn life around. That refreshing spark, that promise of a new beginning.
XIU XIU (Usa, Kill Rock Stars)
FORMER GHOSTS (Usa, Upset the Rhythm)
& special guests
Friday 29th October
The Grand Social, (formerly Pravda)
Doors 8pm
Tickets €15 available from http://www.tickets.ie/skinnywolves & City Discs
(Tickets are selling real quick, so get them now. Limited capacity, etc....)
-----------
XIU XIU
http://www.myspace.com/xiuxiuforlife
Read almost any piece about Xiu Xiu and you'll see words like 'harsh' or 'brutal' — the same words that appear before 'truth' when an unwavering eye is turned on any intimate detail of our lives. Fair descriptions of the themes central to the music, they sit incongruous to the refined, intricate, and beautiful approach taken in crafting the twelve tracks on Xiu Xiu's new album Dear God, I Hate Myself.
Stewart is joined by new full-time band member Angela Seo on piano, synth, and drum programming; with production handled by Jamie and Deerhoof's Greg Saunier. Together they've crafted a fully grown sound for Dear God, I Hate Myself with elements from goth and pop that are expertly performed by a crop of brilliant musicians. Saunier himself plays on much of the record as does Ches Smith (John Zorn, Terry Riley, Marc Ribot) who supplies timpani, conga and moog along with a broad range of other instrumentation. Deerhoof's John Dieterich is all over a rendition of the traditional folk song “Cumberland Gap” and Xiu Xiu is even joined by the Immaculata Catholic School Orchestra in Stewart's ode to heartbreak and healing, “This Too Shall Pass Away (for Freddy).” The title track, one of four songs done primarily on a Nintendo DS, explores the relationship between faith and despair with a layer of commentary provided by the bizarre sounds of the music itself.
Each new Xiu Xiu release has evolved alongside the lives of Jamie Stewart and company. On this record you'll find more intensity and introspection than ever before, but sonically and lyrically it continues to move forward with a subtly new perspective — hyper-focussed yet aware of a larger, external picture unfolding. The pace of the record grips you, the music offers layers of detail, and the themes focus on not just the past or stark present but hint towards vespers of the future as well. Dear God, I Hate Myself will challenge you and force you to look inside yourself, but only after you get lost in the music. It's passionate, it's energetic, and it affects you.
Dear God, I Hate Myself is a beautiful piece of humanist art. It's an important addition to the growing body of intelligent music from Xiu Xiu. And it's a brilliant gothic pop record that can stand next to anything.
http://pitchfork.com/artists/4683-xiu-xiu/
-------------------------
FORMER GHOSTS
http://www.myspace.com/formerghostssleep
"Former Ghosts is a new synthpop project from Freddy Ruppert, formerly of This Song Is a Mess But So Am I. The band is also comprised of Xiu Xiu’s Jamie Stewart and Zola Jesus’ Nika Roza. Ruppert is the lead songwriter on this brutally gloomy, Joy Division-esque project. The title of the debut, Fleurs, is a reference to the white-flowered iris (Iris germanica). " - lastfm
About the forthcoming NEW LOVE LP from Former Ghosts:
Music as the relief, yet also the reminder of the need for relief. If only there were some word that meant both cure and poison. 'New Love.' It's two words, but one title. New love is a cure for the heartbreak and jealousy of the past, but a beginning to a new obsession - the search to replace the old love.
This obsessive search radiates through the entire album. Freddy Ruppert's newest collaborative project is as much an emotional obsession as it is an obsession with sound. The new album is poppier, cleaner, more seductive, sweet, charming, but more bitter. The claustrophobic reverb from the last album has been replaced. The syrupy, entangling wash of sound has been hollowed out and exploded in size.
'New Love.' listens hollow, empty, endless. Like a spacious landscape, frightening in it's expansiveness. This landscape is populated at times sparsely, and at times densely, with a broader use of sounds - guitars, treated piano, glitched out rhythms and beats. The entire sonic experience neurotically crafted - an entire world hand-carved with complete surgical control over every sound.
Throughout the album, Ruppert's vocals feel pressed against you, almost uncomfortably close. And yet at the same time, you're left alone for a larger portion of the album. No longer is a voice constantly guiding you through the cacophony. Your sad, frantic companions leave you alone in shallow depressions that litter the album. Spaces between songs, spaces within songs, all harboring marshy pockets of sound. Small bogs, marring the poppier expanses of what seem like exuberant or triumphant anthems and fanfare.
"Chin Up" is an excellent example of this duality which seems to mimic the mood swings of frustration and relief in extended heartbreak. Roza Danilova's vocals play somewhat like Cyndi Lauper if she were doing the soundtrack to a suicidal, degenerate band of Goonies.
But as bleak and expansive as the new album is, the engine that propels it forward is obsession - an obsession over loss of love, over jealousy, over Ruppert's inability to move on from the past - and not simply a loss of love, but a love of loss. The vast sense of space in the album doubles the feeling of being on the outside of a relationship - of being the third unrequited member of a romance between a couple oblivious to your heartbreak - outside the feelings of someone who has, long ago, fallen out of love with you.
Maybe, in this way, the female collaborators on the album - Nika Roza Danilova of Zola Jesus and first-timer Yasmine Kittles of Tearist - materialise more as simulations, stand-ins or memories of lost loves than as simple musical partners. Roza Danilova's intense, operatic style and Kittles' softer, coquettish beckoning surround Ruppert as the core, writhing, masculine presence in an open, chaotic album.
Jamie Stewart of Xiu Xiu. He's in there. Sneaking around. You'll find him. Adding percussion, wrap-around synths, extra-textures. Another male voice, most noticeably on the album's solid pop number "New Orleans". Just like new love, "New Orleans" offers the same yearning for the new, the change, that will turn life around. That refreshing spark, that promise of a new beginning.
