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Jared Mattson

Peanut

    Debut solo outing for Jared Mattson (of the Mattson 2) on Toro y Moi's Company Records (he jumped in on production) .

    Includes a song entirely in Japanese and a cover of Ween's ‘She Wanted To Leave’. Influenced by Jared's adoration of reggae stalwarts (such as Aswad/Burning Spear and also Andy Summers/The Police) with added jazz and pop tinges.

    Like many debut solo albums from musicians in bands, Jared Mattson’s Peanut didn’t originally come from a need to break away. As a composer for the Mattson 2, Jared Mattson was working up a batch of new songs through the winter of 2019-2020, looking ahead to the next album he and brother Jonathan Mattson, the blitzkrieging drummer, would record. As the pandemic hit stateside, Jared holed up in his home studio and kept developing the new music. And during that process it became increasingly clear to them that this wasn’t shaping up to be the next Mattson 2 album. This was a Mattson 1 album.

    Jared had been absorbing the guitar work on records by reggae stalwarts Aswad and Burning Spear, and also the Police’s Andy Summer and the ways he gives songs space. And Jared wanted a prominent bass sound, too, where the guitar itself sometimes settles into the passenger seat so that the bass can drive. Lyrically, the album taps into our rattled world, where anxiety, loss, violence, and regret are sometimes pierced by the promise of love. The time spent working on the album was a profoundly introspective time as he reflected on past relationships while living through and writing during the pandemic, he also never lost sight of this truth about himself: Life is great with music.

    One of the album’s standout highlights is “Burn Down Babylon,” which is propelled by the bass’s funk-you-say groove. You don’t often encounter many pop songs with so blunt an opening line as, “I got punched in the face last night by a neo-Nazi,”—a true experience that was delivered many years ago in a bar brawl in Carlsbad, California. But to hear the music that goes along with this tale manages a vibe that is less melee and more backyard jubilee.

    When “Please Come Here,” with an intro that slinks along like a Cadillac on a Sunday morning drive, kicks in, it’s typical of the album’s melodic pop flourishes, but the twist here is that the vocals are in Japanese (The Mattson 2 have toured Japan 20 times and covered many Japanese pop songs on 2018’s Vaults of Eternity: Japan). Ween’s “She Wanted to Leave” is the lone cover, but the way Jared reimagines the song makes it fits seamlessly within the album’s sonic template. The song’s inclusion was also a personal way to honour one of Jared’s best friends, who died from cancer two years ago. The two had always bonded over the song and marvelled at its inherent beauty. Ultimately, Mattson’s solo debut unfolds like a string of fascinating clouds: These are not songs in a hurry; they shift around as they float by, and, most notably, they carry their unique kind of electric charge.


    TRACK LISTING

    1. Peanut
    2. Please Come Home
    3. Burn Down Babylon
    4. She Wanted To Leave
    5. Don't Run
    6. Life Could Be So Much Better
    7. Dry
    8. Nish Nish Tahee Loosh
    9. Exit

    Tanukichan

    GIZMO

      Five years since her last album ‘Sundays’ Tanukichan is back with the follow up…’GIZMO’.

      It's a heady mix of fuzzed out guitars, shoegaze and wall-of-sound alt-rock.

      Released on Toro y Moi's Company Records (he also helped write, record and produce the record)

      When the pandemic hit, Hannah van Loon adopted a dog named Gizmo, who became a much-needed companion while the Bay Area musician wrote her second album as Tanukichan. Aptly Named after her new four-legged friend, GIZMO is an exercise in release, whether from situational hindrances—a forced lockdown, for one—or from self-imposed hedonistic coping mechanisms.“ A theme I always had floating around was escape,” van Loon explains of her follow-up to 2018’s Sundays. “Escaping from myself, my problems, sadness and cycles.”

      To channel the more uplifting spirit she wanted for GIZMO, van Loon turned to the radio pop-rock of her childhood: “I was struck by the in-your-face positivity of the lyrics,” she adds,referencing artists like 311, The Cranberries, and Tom Petty. “I wanted to bring that positivity while writing about the sad and helpless emotions I’d been grappling with.” But GIZMO’s lightheartedness doesn’t make it shallow: “I think that I could let it go, as beautiful as snow,” she murmurs on “Don’t Give Up,” a nu metal-meets-Cocteau Twins groove about the sudden awareness that all the relationships you depend on could vanish instantaneously. Van Loon’s main collaborator on GIZMO was Toro y Moi’s Chaz Bear, and the jangly pop earworm “Take Care” showcases the heavily distorted, in-your-face guitar work reminiscent of Bear’s own psych joints What For? And Mahal. On the hypnotic, wall-of-sound-rocker “Thin Air” featuring Enumclaw, van Loon channels the triumphant grit of The Smashing Pumpkins as she ponders the impermanence of even the most impactful relationships: “I’ll always have the memories/Of how you used to make me see/Until they fell in the ocean/They’re not swimming/They’re not floating.”

      Existentialism aside, GIZMO also sees van Loon break out of her sonic comfort zone. “One ofthe main changes of how I’m approaching music now is that I want to have more fun in the process,” she says, and she walks the line between melodrama and whimsy gracefully: “I can learn something because I’ve been here before,” she sings on the soaring, bittersweet “Been Here Before.” Deftones-inspired thrash drums and screeching electric guitars are gracefully contrasted with van Loon’s hypnotic, almost deadpan vocal style and a crystal clear acoustic guitar she describes as “cute.” Gizmo the dog suddenly passed away right as van Loon finished the album, but he’s immortalised with his photo on the cover—a fitting emblem of this new era of Tanukichan.


      TRACK LISTING

      1. Escape
      2. Don't Give Up
      3. A Bad Dream
      4. Been Here Before
      5. Make Believe
      6. Like You
      7. Thin Air (feat. Emunclaw)
      8. Nothing To Lose
      9. Take Care
      10. Mr. Rain

      Uffie

      Sunshine Factory

        Welcome to Uffie’s new album Sunshine Factory – an alternate reality that is only accessible to those yearning for escape. A nod to the ballroom scene, it is a place where you can be your most authentic self. Inside this trippy wonderland, you’ll meet Uffie, dancing amongst the lights of your hallucinations. Sunshine Factory is a wonderfully restless record. It’s a joyride through the club, hurtling into the forest, and crowd surfing into the arms of a lover… and yet it’s also the sound of waking up to a heap of champagne soaked jeans, the bass of your heart still throbbing along to last night’s melodies.

        A decade after her first record, which included–debatably–the internet’s first viral hit, the electro smash “Pop The Glock,” Uffie “the French-American singer/rapper/DJ/fashion designer who took the internet by storm” (Brooklyn Vegan) is most definitely back. Raised between Florida and Hong Kong before moving to Paris with her British father, the now Los Angeles-based Uffie is undeniably a “child of the world;” unsurprisingly, the making of this record clocked up a few air miles as well. Birthing what would become the Sunshine Factory in Fonte da Telha, Portugal collaborating with Norwegian savant Lasse Lokøy, Uffie soon found a home for these songs back in California with Chaz Bear of Toro y Moi–who co-produced several of the tracks–and his Oakland-based label, Company Records. The resulting album is one of intricate production, sonic experimentation, and subtle poetic brilliance amongst a few Fleabag glances to the camera.

        Amidst double entendres galore, her record exists in a curious space between punk and pop, which can be heard in the ska-meets-fashion week “dominoes.” Contrarily, “sophia” – which marked the advent of Uffie and Chaz’s creative partnership several years ago – poises Sunshine Factory as an otherworldly dance record one would hear in Berlin’s famous Berghain nightclub. She is the party girl who is at her most vulnerable in the chaotic “where does the party go?” where she reckons with facing who she truly is when she’s all alone. It’s in these dualities and juxtapositions that the joy of Uffie writhes.

        The album also has a cameo or three, including the one and only Peaches. And after finding kinship and admiration in the genre-defying NNAMDÏ, she tapped him for the record’s sole feature on “month of mondays.” It is at this point in the record that the beloved je ne sais quoi that Uffie has always possessed really emerges. When the comedown begins and the insatiable few remain on the dancefloor, “a month of mondays” is the knowing nod to a stranger signaling the night’s shift in course. With Sunshine Factory, it’s a pop-up party wherever you can find some speakers. Cool.


        TRACK LISTING

        1. Mvp
        2. Where Does The Party Go?
        3. Peaches (interlude)
        4. Domines
        5. Prickling Skin
        6. Queen Ilona (interlude)
        7. Anna Jetson
        8. Sophia
        9. A Month Of Mondays (feat. NNADMÏ)
        10. Giants
        11. Teddy <3 (interlude)
        12. Cool
        13. Crowdsurfinginyoursheets

        The Mattson 2

        Paradise

          When things are right, they’re right; it’s rare that everything falls into place. It’s rarer still to capture that feeling on wax, which is what The Mattson 2 have achieved with their latest album, Paradise. It’s their second release on Chaz Bear’s (fka Chaz Bundick, aka Toro y Moi) Company Records, and first without Bear as a member of the band.

          The identical twins, Jared (guitars) and Jonathan (drums), have left their trademark virtuosity on display; within the 32-minute runtime they’ve managed to capture the arc of an entire relationship between two people. You can tell from how warm the guitars sound - we go from emotional equilibrium to longing to happiness to loss. “For years and years you’ve been on my mind,” they sing, and mean it. When the Mattsons sing the line “you’re so special, you’re so easy” it’s easy to forget they’re not talking to you.

          Even so, it’s a record to throw a frisbee to — it’s a sylphlike, sylvan thing, meant to be used and enjoyed. “We don’t want people to think too hard,” they say. “We want to let people in!” That’s perhaps because it’s the first album they’ve written and recorded in their home, which is a wooden cabin in the hills of San Diego. You can hear the sun in the keyboards, in the 80s-inflected jazz. The singing is new, too. What it adds up to is a bigger, bolder sound than their previous work; the brothers say they went into it trying out a conceptually new, cohesive sound — a new sonic palette to create from. It’s a little bit of summer you can savor all year long.

          They’ve been playing shows for 15 years without any vocals; on Paradise, though, the twins have added their voices to the mix, which adds a welcome new human dimension to the record. “No matter how much someone loved the instrumental set they’d ask if we sang!” Jared said. Even so, the lyrics are meant to be abstract, to conjure a mood. If you listen closely you’ll be able to discern what the Mattson brothers are feeling. There’s longing, in songs that are about getting what you want and realizing it’s not actually the right thing; there’s lyrics about not being free, in both the capitalist system and in the creative one. There’s a song about a loved one dying from an overdose. There are deep themes here, even if the subjects are treated lightly.

          On “Naima’s Dream,” which opens the album, the Mattsons lock into a buoyant melody; it sounds like the feeling of lying in a park on a carefree, sunny day, watching the dogs chase the people throwing frisbees in the distance. That feeling carries through the rest of the album, too; on “Essence,” which describes a relationship in progress. “You’re so special, you’re so easy,” the Mattsons sing over a lush guitar arrangement propelled by a truly grooving bass line.

          The range of human experience is vast, and the Mattsons have managed to capture a piece of it in stunning detail. Being alive demands every kind of adjective: difficult, boring, fun, sustaining, affirming, renewing, reviving, strenuous, punishing, arbitrary, unfeeling, inconvenient, and everything in between. The slice that the Mattsons describe in this album is uniformly sweet, but inflected with the knowledge of how quickly things can change, and how, most of the time, it’s hard to recognize that they’re changing until the metamorphosis is already complete.


          Madeline Kenney

          Night Night At The First Landing

            Madeline Kenney begins her new album with a helpful reminder: “Don’t forget, there’s room for you.” The declaration is meant to lay to rest unnecessary competition. The universe is pretty large. It’s a fitting welcome to Kenney’s debut full-length, Night Night At The First Landing. The record is framed by meditative, repetitive recordings that each offer some kind of encouragement. "Don't you worry about a thing, you're fine." "I won't give up on anything now." The trip on Night Night is deciding whether the narrator is full of confidence or talking to themselves privately.

            Kenney began working on the record immediately after completing her first EP, 2016’s Signals. As with Signals, Company Records label head Chaz Bundick (Toro Y Moi) was on hand as producer, but with Kenney as the arranger and key creative force, Night Night reveals more of the artist. Kenney wrote and arranged all the songs and tracked most of the instruments at home.

            "No one's a hero for just being strong," Kenney sings on first single “Rita,” letting us know it’s about action and how that strength is utilized. It takes guts. The song bursts with an exhilarating guitar workout providing a clear-headed version of distorted bliss. Similarly euphoric is a math-y tapout on “Witching Hour.” Narratives of people and how those people affect others are surrounded by musical worlds of echo and propulsion. The melody through-line of “Always” is a transfixing piano part of royal heritage. “Big One” is a lyrical puzzle and a musical skip across happy times.

            The album is unavoidably dreamy, dipping into sweet fuzz while usually sailing through smooth, crystalline production. The songs are about people, and though people sometimes disappoint, this record is meant to comfort. Fall into it and imagine the clouds scooping you up, or the changing tide’s ripples gliding you past a gentle moon’s new reflection.

            STEREOGUM: “Lead single “Rita” is exceptional, building from understated beauty to dense guitar theatrics. It reminds me of Chicago circa ’93 as remembered in a dream — a little bit of Liz Phair 'Exile In Guyville' - rendered in soft-focus with the graceful confidence of a young master. Its video, directed by Adam Murphy, makes for a compelling introduction. 

            TRACK LISTING

            1. Don't Forget // There's Room
            2. Rita
            3. Witching Hour
            4. John In Irish
            5. This Way // You're Happy
            6. Always
            7. Big One
            8. Waitless
            9. Uncommon
            10.Give Up // On Anything

            Chaz Bundick Meets The Mattson 2

            Star Stuff

            Given the state of modern music and its fabricated pop icons, what Chaz Bundick Meets The Mattson 2 achieves is a collective music victory in a new era of progressive soundscapes. World-renowned composer/producer extraordinaire Chaz Bundick (Toro Y Moi, Les Sins) has teamed up with the psychedelic-jazz grooves of The Mattson 2 for an album that unifies a trio's creativity into a refreshing project of unhinged sonic originality.

            Oddly enough, this collaboration may not have happened if The Mattson 2 hadn’t forgotten a drum throne at an Oakland performance in 2014. The twin’s longtime friend and photographer, Andrew Paynter, came to the rescue and called his friend Chaz to ask about borrowing the throne. Jonathan, the Mattson drummer (who’d also never met Chaz), accompanied Andrew to Chaz's home in Berkeley where they were greeted by Chaz with a warm smile, a drum stool in hand, and Michael, Chaz's dog (which his Les Sins record Michael is named after).

            The next day Andrew and the twins met Chaz at a cafe in Berkeley to return the gear. Over coffee they waxed about music, design, furniture, and skateboarding. After a series of hangs with Chaz in the Bay Area, the crew decided to join forces and schedule studio time for their newfound trio. And the rest, as they say, is intergalactic, mega-creative history.

            In February of 2016 the relationship was officially christened the night they finished tracking their new record. And to tie the knot with flare, they scheduled a secret show at the Battery and a historical public show at the Starline Social Club in Oakland, where the trio performed all new music from the project for the first time live.

            The group and the album, Chaz Bundick Meets Mattson 2, explores psychedelic, jazz, and improvisatory influences ranging from Afrofuturistic Sun Ra, to electric Miles Davis, to groove-fueled Serge Gainsbourg and The Zombies. Grounding the album are break-beats, synthesizers, acoustic strums, and guitar fuzz reminiscent of David Axelrod and Arthur Verocai. With cosmic structures, timeless influences, rich harmonies, and melodic interplays, the trio brings an intergalactic edge to both their live shows and an album worthy of repeated visits


            TRACK LISTING

            Sonmoi
            A Search
            JBS
            Star Stuff
            Steve Pink
            Disco Kid
            Dont Blame Yourself
            Cascade

            Vinyl Williams is the moniker of Lionel Williams, 25 year old Los Angeles based artist and experimental-pop musician. ‘Into’ - his startlingly accomplished second album - effortlessly fuses psych, krautrock, ambient and shoegaze into a transcendental whole.

            The record ripples outward into blissful sonic geography. Lead track ‘World Soul’ sounds like celestial soul music; ’Gold Lodge’ floats on jazzy chords and a propulsive baseline; ’Greatest Lives’ and ‘Iguana City’ are loungey new age jams that continually unfold; ‘Xol Rumi’ closes the album in an etheric motorik voyage. Uniquely, all the album’s 14 tracks are written, performed and produced solely by the multi-instrumentalist Williams.

            Williams is highly influenced by the archetypal forces of ancient initiation, multi-religious symbolism, and Jung's take on psycho-analysis. He interweaves these ideas into a vacuum of supernatural and futuristic realms of sound & colour; aiming to create a paradoxical menage of “sonic matrices” deliberately designed to have a beneficial psycho-physical effect on the listener. It is the singular sound of a restless creative scrying these concepts to conjure a uniquely personal & intuitive experience.

            The interactive visual elements for each song on the album create a constellation of simulated synesthesia, impressions of multi-sensuous realms beyond the senses. Williams employed scientific illuminism (the method of science & the aim of religion) in the process of creating the virtual worlds as well as soundscapes – to generate an entire mysterious planet of harmony & equilibrium.

            His music’s amorphous sensation is a constant across all Williams' artistic mediums. He has exhibited his similarly ethereal art across New York, Los Angeles, Berlin, and Seoul, and created official videos for Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Tears For Fears, Young Magic, and Dub Thompson.

            Vinyl Williams on Into:
            “Into’ was made to help subconsciously stimulate as well as soothe the listener into a critically neutral / balanced mental state. The main technique employed was through the incorporation of opposites into the sound & visual, such as meditative abrasiveness.”

            Williams is the grandson of film composer John Williams and the son of Mark Towner Williams, drummer for Crosby, Stills, & Nash, Tina Turner, and Air Supply; his mother Leah was a classical pianist. He grew up in a Mormon community in Utah, USA. As a direct reaction to religious dissonances experienced in Utah, he has experimented with audio as a pragmatic healing tool. He also created one of the world’s first truly interactive music videos (players could explore an environment and manipulate individual elements of audio with their movements.

            TRACK LISTING

            1. Gold Lodge
            2. Space Age Utopia
            3. Ring
            4. World Soul
            5. Hall Of Records
            6. The Tears Of An Inanimate Object
            7. Iguana City
            8. Greatest Lives
            9. Zero Wonder
            10. Axiomatic Mind
            11. Eter Wave Agreement
            12. Plinth Of Uncanny Design
            13. Allaz
            14. Xol Rumi

            Keath Mead would like to invite you to Sunday Dinner. The 25-year-old South Carolina native’s debut album is as pleasurable as a drive along the coast, as comforting as a day out with friends, and as sweet as pie after lunch. Steeped in the classic sounds of ‘60s and ‘70s pop singer-songwriters, Mead is just as influenced by contemporary artists such as The Shins’ James Mercer and Jack White. “Waiting” opens the record with a warm bed of synths and Mead sings, “One day you’re gonna land/ in a place that you never planned/ in your life to see.” An optimistic song about potential? Maybe. But it’s definitely a song about regret. Mead has that timeless ability to make songs that seem to say one thing, but move us to feel many things. With Sunday Dinner, Mead aspired to achieve a songwriting ideal: “If a song doesn’t hold up with one person singing and playing a single instrument, then it’s probably not that good of a song,” he says.

            The album was recorded in only eight daysover the span of nine months—with the help of Chaz Bundick (Toro Y Moi, Les Sins). Bundick hosted Mead in his Berkeley, Calif., home studio for the recording. Mead’s guitar and vocal tracks came first, then Bundick on bass, before the pair took turns on drums and synthesizers. The collaborative process lent an improvisational aspect to the album, with the pair playing music until they found a passage they both liked. The live playing and “happy accidents” of the recording process add to the easy-going vibe of the LP.

            Though recording the album was relatively short, the songs were written over three years. The primary theme of the record is the anxiety induced by the rapid changes brought on by coming of age. Mead also contemplates isolation, loss of innocence, and angst associated with maturation.

            TRACK LISTING

            Waiting
            Grow Up
            She Had
            Change
            Settle For Less
            Holiday
            Where I Wanna Be
            Quiet Room
            Navy
            Polite Refusal
            So Close


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