Space rock appears to be coming back in a big way, and bands like Brooklyn's White Hills are at the forefront of this movement. Their latest album "Frying on this Rock," (scheduled for release on March 20th) is a riff-heavy tour-de-force of epic psychedelia. The album was recorded by legendary NYC producer Martin Bisi (Sonic Youth, Brian Eno, Swans, Herbie Hancock, Boredoms) and features five jam-heavy tracks, with "I Write a Thousand Letters (Pulp on Bone)" clocking in at nearly 12 minues in length. That song presents clever use of distant conversational voices contributing to dreamlike texture as it weaves through industrial sounding guitars and a hypnotic drum patterns. Subsequent cuts emphasize sonorous power chords, rhapsodic guitar solos and and swirling synth tones. The band will be debuting tracks from the new album live at The Mercury Lounge on January 24. Special guests MOFO, which feature ex-members of A Place To Bury Strangers, will also be playing that night. - Dave Cromwell
We've always been big fans of Luke Temple, and it's good to see that, together with the Here We Go Magic crew, the man is keeping at it with increasingly beautiful records and videos. The band's new album "A Different Ship" (stream it here) will be out on May 8, and betrays at least a partial return to Luke Temple's more intimate and melodic sound from his solo repertoire - in this regard, lend a ear to "Hard to Be Close," "Alone but Moving" and "Over the Ocean". This is welcome news for fans like us who always thought that in most HWGM material Luke's noteworthy songwriting skills seemed a little sacrificed on the altar of textural experimentation. This doesn't mean that the band's signature hypnotic, impressionistic sound is lost - it's just that these two elements work together better than they did in past records, and this is what makes this album one of the NYC highlights of the year so far. Indeed, this collection also features songs more in line with the band's past releases ("Make Up your Mind", "I Believe in Action"), which follow on the steps of brainy-pop icons like Brian Eno and The Feelies, but there's definitely a balance here, also betrayed by the almost perfect alternation of melodic songs and less traditional ones.The just released video of "How Do I Know," telling the story of a rejected dancing robot that ends up revitalizing an older man's appreciation for life, seems to reflect on this brain/heart, mechanic/organic dichotomies and somehow bring them to unity. - PDG
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