Animal Collective to Start U.S. Tour in Orlando

On July 7th, Orlando’s Beacham Theatre will host the return of Animal Collective to the U.S., following a 13-stop European tour.

Included on the US tour will be the return of 4th member Deakin to complement a lineup that boasts 3 artists who have kept busy with successful solo projects (Panda Bear, Avey Tare, and Geologist).

New US Dates

7-7 Orlando FL – The Beacham Theatre
7-8 Alpharetta GA – Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre
7-9 Columbia MD – Merriweather Post Pavilion (yes it’s real–first show hosted)
7-12 Brooklyn NY – Prospect Park
7-13 Millvale PA – Mr Smalls Theatre
7-15 Chicago IL – Pitchfork Music Festival

Sources:

• Contributor Marc S.
• Jambase
• Pitchfork

RA RA RIOT & Sleepy Vikings: Wednesday

Attention! Ra Ra Riot is swinging through the Sunshine State. Their calamitous ra-ra-riot’ing has awakened some Sleepy Vikings, who will join them as an opener this Wednesday at Crowbar. Ra Ra Riot hauled in widespread acclaim for their 2007 self-titled EP, and since have been touring, releasing singles, and participating in some side projects (including Discovery, a co-mingling with fellow New Yorkers, Vampire Weekend). This is also a great opportunity to check out our local up-and-comers, Sleepy Vikings, who are ready to unveil some new tunes, we hear.

This show is this WEDNESDAY, that’s the 9th, so claim tickets now! Crowbar has sold out before and will probably sell out again. Tickets cost more at the door anyway.
Tickets – $13

And don’t forget your jean shorts, plastic glasses, etc etc, and join as us we stand around idly and stare at attractive-looking people.

Here’s a recent single from RRR to get you in the mood, 2010′s “Boy”:

Songs That Generated Buzz in 2010 (Part 2)

As promised, here is part 2. Fifty more songs, once again accompanied with crucial context info about each track.

Songs That Generated Buzz in 2010 (Part 1)

 

Update: Our full list of 100 songs is here.

To fully honor all the music review and news following we did during 2010, it seemed appropriate to provide a list of “top” songs to accompany our top 10 albums list. It would be far too subjective to offer an ordered list of the year’s best songs, so I decided to shift the mood to exposure. In that mindset, I’ve embedded players so you can sample each song on the fly. I skimmed over most pop music (not all!) – you don’t need me to tell you that Katy Perry sold 50 billion albums this year.

In short, my goal is to be informative; to essentially report to you the songs that generated buzz within various subcultures. To do add some objectivity I researched the background of candidate tracks and let play counts and view totals influence final decisions (Last.fm, YouTube, MySpace, etc).

Thank you to all the Brasky scouts for originally discovering and sharing many of these songs. In no particular order:

Part 2 coming soon!

Top 10 Albums of 2010

Reader:: I thought this was a Florida music blog.
BRASKY: It is. But we wouldn’t be very good at evaluating the local music scenes if we didn’t know what was going on elsewhere.

Reader:: Well if I wanted a broader summary of best albums, why wouldn’t I just go to Pitchfork, Amazon, NME, etc?
BRASKY: Go for it. This isn’t so much a proclamation of what was the best this year as much as it is a calibration of the criteria we use to review local music and diagnose local culture. We hope that this brings us closer to our audience.

Reader:: OK. So a couple of you got together and reviewed your iTunes play counts from 2010.
BRASKY: There are about 20 people who collaborated on this. We listened to more albums than we could bear and we all hate listening to music now. The discussion has been going on all year and the following list encapsulates the mean sentiment of people whose judgment we trust. To honor the democratic spirit of the process, the list is not ordered.

”

Phantogram – Eyelid Movies
	Immediately upon settling the needle down on the imaginary vinyl of Eyelid Movies, the rookie album from the New York duo that record as Phantogram, the sound emerges in much the same manner… it seems to diffuse out from the speakers, a highly textured mixture of viscous sexuality and fearless mystery-pop that requires no special glasses to tickle your amygdala. - Aaron Rogge
Surfer Blood – Astro Coast
	Astro Coast is the album that Weezer fans have been living 15 years without. Unabashed power-pop hooks meet sunny self-aware rhetoric in an album that knows just where to hang tambourines, hold pauses an extra beat, or take a scrumptious riff around the block for another spin. In a year that saw numerous ‘beach’-themed albums slam 1960s Detroit blues-pop into Beach Boyish reverb-soaked lullabies for maximum indie cred, this album comes across as the most honest, hard-working, and promising of 2010′s rock crop. And with Brasky being a Florida-based music/scene/art blog, it just feels right to include these South Florida youngsters in our top 10. - Aaron Rogge
Caribou – Swim
	For much of the year this album defied measure for the Brasky reviewers, first described as yet another chin-stroking Caribou album when we reviewed it in April. Swim, Dan Snaith’s 5th full-length album and 3rd under the Caribou moniker, was unmistakably inventive and beautiful, though the prevailing criticism was that some of the songs were simply too challenging. 2007′s Andorra (“a mellow, psychedelic grab bag of masterfully conceived “bedroom music”.”) marked the beginning of a psychedelic shift in his sound, a trend inherited and heavily accentuated by Swim. Snaith tests, new funky vocal styles alongside electro synths metered by house rhythms, sprinkled as usual with studio-sampled drum work. Our original review noted that the underlying music was, in some ways, a throwback to the more electronic sounds of Manitoba: “Swim takes a turn to more experimental and earthy sounds, more closely resembling the sounds of Snaith’s earlier work as Manitoba, with tracks building and decaying steadily and with more repetition, in general. But Swim is by no means a digression, as Snaith tests a variety of sounds and styles, including regular doses of scale-wandering vocals that call to mind fellow Canadians the Junior Boys.” That was after a week’s contemplation in April. What we came to discover as the year went by was that the more we dissected any one aspect of the music, the more merit the songs gained. Most importantly, we realized the album grew in plain listenability throughout the year. While it’s important to note that there is still some internal debate on this album, the prevailing zealousness of its endorsers earns it a spot in this year’s top 10. - Derek Clark
LCD Soundsystem – This is Happening
	LCD Soundsystem have knocked it out of the ballpark. Whatever the creative process is for James Murphy, it works. As people expected a dance record, they were instead given a masterpeice of melodies and rhythm. - Emanuel Moshouris
Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti – Before Today
	Before there was Haunted Graffiti, there was just Ariel. Since the early 2000′s he has been secretly amassing a vast catalog of lo-fi, nostalgic pop music. Before Today hit at the perfect moment for a fast-growing undercurrent of listeners ready to embrace new(er) wave sounds and 80s nostalgia. The album seems effortlessly timeless, wandering carefully through stretches of psychedelic rock and new wave ennui. Accusations of mimicry should instead be described as support for Ariel’s nimble translation of an emerging cultural yearning to rediscover the artistic honesty of 70′s/80′s pop music. - Derek Clark
Wavves – King of the Beach
	After an epic meltdown on his European tour, the troubled genius behind Wavves brings that trademark sense of sarcasm and aggression to another noise punk hit-list. Drawing heavily from the Pixies, Nirvana, and every jaded pill-popper that’s ever thrashed on a Fender Jaguar, Wavves pushes the pace yet still finds time to groove. - Aaron Rogge
Sufjan Stevens – Age of Adz
	Age of Adz feels like Sufjan Stevens had submitted to himself. It seems as if there had been this thing catalyzing inside of him, growing with each album released, larger and more substantial until he could bear it no more. In reality, months before development had started on Age of Adz, Sufjan had been victim of a bizarre nervous system infection, nearly rendering him immobile and in excruciating pain. I won’t pretend to know of the creative process, because I don’t. I can however, imagine how frustrating it must feel to be unable to create when there is something inside of you needing to be let out. Evidenced by the dark and bellowing melodies with electronic undertones, by no mean is this a typical Sufjan album. - Emanuel Moshouris Lyrically this album seems more personal and more mature than his others. He has the same angelic chorus for his backup vocals. On this album he got his hands on a drum machine and experimented with textures. - Cathy Hughes
Beach House – Teen Dream
	Teen Dream lands somewhere between French X-rated movie soundtrack and midnight college radio long-play material. That being said, the restless winding of this album is a haunting and gratifying trip through afternoon memories and summer endlessness. - Aaron Rogge
Gold Panda – Lucky Shiner
	Last year Gold Panda arrived on the scene with the infectious sounds of “Quitter’s Raga” – A 2-minute collage of diced-up Eastern sentiment. From this teaser we approached Gold panda’s debut full-length release, Lucky Shiner, with optimism. The album immediately delivers with “You”, a track that borrows from the formula that made “Quitter’s Raga” so appealing – finely diced vocal samples laid over syncopating hip hop pattering. From here the album takes an intriguing shift toward minimalism, remaining rich with detail but steady and enchanting in rhythm. “Same Dream China” and “Snow & Taxis” are great examples of the patient accumulation of sounds and moods that come to shape the emotional experience of the music. As the song titles seem to support, Lucky Shiner oozes a vibe of reflection on past memories, places and relationships. Seems fitting enough coming from a reclusive Englishmen who’s spent time in Japan and attended the School of Oriental and Asian Studies at the University of London.
Sleigh Bells – Treats
	From June’s review: “Sleigh Bells managed to first fuse together two massive, adrenaline pumping styles–hardcore and crunk hip hop–but then took it a step further by sprinkling it with soft, feminine synth pop vocals. Occasionally the sonic shitstorm stalls long enough to hear Alexis chirp something about “your boyfriend”, immediately cut off when overdriven, heavily stacked chunks of “melody” resume the assault on your eardrums. The compression and overdriven distortion are usually so heavy that they nearly mute out the vocal tracks when the two coincide – this usually would constitute a production error, but this seems consistent with the spirit of Treats: Unrelenting, unpolished, provocative machine “pop”. - Derek Clark

Honorable Mentions

These albums were in the discussion for the top 10 and should be g’sharked, pandora’d, or otherwise passed through the body.

 

Staff Top 10s

These album nods are attached to names and rankings (which will be useful for readers formulating vitriolic objections in the comment box.)

Derek’s Top 10	Nikki’s Top 10
10 Harlem – Hippies 9 Wild Nothing – Gemini 8 Sleigh Bells – Treats 7 Surfer Blood – Astro Coast 6 Tennis – Baltimore 5 Noisia – Split the Atom 4 Wavves – King of the Beach 3 Gold Panda – Lucky Shiner 2 Baths – Cerulean 1 Phantogram – Eyelid Movies	10 Heyoka – Cosmic Boogie 9 Beats Antique – Blind Threshold 8 The Great Mundane – This is so You 7 Venetian Snares – My So-Called Life 6 Sufjan Stevens – Age of Adz 5 LCD Soundsystem – This Is Happening 4 Sleigh Bells – Treats 3 Gold Panda – Lucky Shiner 2 Beach House – Teen Dream 1 Phantogram – Eyelid Movies
Emanuel’s Top 10	Aaron’s Top 10
10 Hans Zimmer – Inception Soundtrack 9 Crystal Castles – Crystal Castles II 8 Phantogram – Eyelid Movies 7 Venetian Snares – My So Called Life 6 LCD Soundsystem – London Sessions 5 Sufjan Stevens – Age of Adz 4 Autechre – Oversteps 3 Sleigh Bells – Treats 2 Jimmy Edgar – XXX 1 LCD Soundsystem – This is Happening	10 Beach House – Teen Dream 9 Four Tet – There is Love in You 8 Wavves – King of the Beach 7 Local Natives – Gorilla Manor 6 Phantogram – Eyelid Movies 5 LCD Soundsystem – This is Happening 4 Bonobo – Black Sands 3 Red Sparowes – The Fear is Excruciating… 2 Best Coast – Crazy for You 1 Surfer Blood – Astro Coast

Stay tuned for a completely accurate list of the top songs of 2010!

100 Songs That Generated Buzz in 2010

To fully honor all the music review and news following we did during 2010, it seemed appropriate to provide a list of “top” songs to accompany our top 10 albums list. It would be far too subjective to offer an ordered list of the year’s best songs, so I decided to shift the mood to exposure. In that mindset, I’ve embedded players so you can sample each song on the fly. I skimmed over most pop music (not all!) – you don’t need me to tell you that Katy Perry sold 50 billion albums this year.

In short, my goal is to be informative; to essentially report to you the songs that generated buzz within various subcultures. To do add some objectivity I researched the background of candidate tracks and let play counts and view totals influence final decisions (Last.fm, YouTube, MySpace, etc).

Thank you to all the Brasky scouts for originally discovering and sharing many of these songs. In no particular order:

New Music: Diamond Man – Travels

It’s a good time to live in the Tampa Bay area, but it hasn’t always been that way. Spending the better part of my adolescence here, I felt discouraged when I heard others regularly romanticize their eventual migration to more alluring cities. But, eventually, I came to feel the same. Slummy Ybor marauding, sink-or-swimming in college town, dress-coded martini tours around Hyde Park… where was the soul of Tampa Bay? Where were the artisans and down-to-earth young folks? Did we have any?

Yes, that was a segue into Diamond Man. Earlier this month, they hooked us up (on request) with a physical copy of the new album, Travels (with bonus collage artwork). I blew the dust off my old boom box and gave it a spin.

While their sound is not easily summarized by genre labels–not even cool, hyper-niched ones–what’s easy to hear in their music is something pure and honest. The trio of young art students–Ryne Heslin, Josh Fowler, and Justin Myers–blend together keyboard electronics, psyched-out guitars, and heavily obscured utterances to build accumulative, organic jams. Faint vocal elements and distant synths evoke imagery of tropical landscapes and secret undersea worlds. At the heart of these new landscapes is a very natural and human presence, daring listeners to slough off their surroundings and embark on foreign travels to familiar-feeling places.

“Wafers” is a good starting point, a jam that feels especially afro-spirited with a worldly collage of sonic brushstrokes, tempered with drums that beat with tribal steadiness. Download Wafers below, and also sample two additional tracks from the debut LP.

Wafers [ download ]

Leif Langford

Travels

New Music: Dark Sea of Awareness

Introducing Dark Sea of Awareness, a.k.a., the musical project of Orlando artist Steven Head. Brasky first became aware of Steven’s music last month when he opened up for Diamond Man’s CD release show in Tampa, offering a modest solo performance that roused us from a beerbar daydream (and as we would learn later, roused the attention others).

We caught up with Steven after the show to learn a little more about DSoA (<–Pro tip: acronymn establishes a sense of familiarity and importance). His music is composed and performed primarily on his synth, though occasionally he lets the robots loop while he plucks out some heavily ‘verbed accents on the guitar. The music style bears the accumulative and reflective nature of ambient work, slowly engaging listeners with the incremental introduction of new synth layers and, somewhat surprisingly, heavy bass kicks that firmly mark the listening pace. Steve cites Eastern thought, particularly Buddhism, and design philosophy as conscious influences over his creative process. The name “Dark Sea of Awareness” is a phrase borrowed from anthropologist–and shamanism historian/philosopher–Carlos Castaneda.

Having finished a degree in Urban Planning, we’re eager to see where Steven and Dark Sea of Awareness goes. Please join us in exploring the first chapter of the project with a sampling of tracks from his a first EP, Digital Magic.

“Each Step” [ download ]

“What Can I Do”

In the meantime, keep an eye out for Steven around the Orlando area as he handles some guitar work for up-and-comer Emily Reo.

Pic of the Week

My lady noticed this cool channel the other day:

TV is getting good these days
DOT DOT DOT

Save Cigar City’s Tasting Room!

As we’ve mentioned before, Cigar City Brewing is widely considered the best thing going in Florida craft beer. With one of their beers, Hunahpu’s Imperial Stout, regarded as one of the 10 best in the world by BeerAdvocate.com, it’s not difficult to argue Cigar City’s growing value to the city of Tampa. The increasing prestige and cult popularity of Cigar City’s beer does not appear to be fully understood by Tampa City Council representatives, however.

Last Thursday the Cigar City Tasting Room was denied (what was expected to be) a routine renewal of a zoning permit by a 3-3 vote. Four votes are required for renewal. While we don’t know why city council members would vote against the renewal, Cigar City’s blog insists that it’s unusual given that it was merely a renewal. Assuming the tasting room isn’t peddling whores, laundering money, or hiding fugitives, Brasky stands behind the brewery and asks for your support toward influencing the result of the re-vote on December 2nd. Reaching out to any Tampa City Council members will help, but getting a single vote from any of the following council members should ensure a renewal:

 

Gwen Miller (voted against)
Thomas Scott (voted against)
Curtis Stokes (voted against)
Charlie Miranda (not present for first vote)

If you attempt to contact any of these individuals, be cordial – it’s important that the renewal is viewed as a benefit for the community and not as an opportunity to spurn a raucous Tampa subculture. (RAGGHGHGH!) You are encouraged to spread the word to others.

For more background on the situation, check out head brewer Wayne Wamble’s Facebook plea.

(And on second thought, we don’t really care what Cigar City does behind closed doors as long as they keep turning out gold medal beer.)