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LOWERLIPDRIP SHARE VIDEO FOR ‘FLAWLESS’
Chicago-based duo LOWERLIPDRIP share their latest single Flawless, with a second track ‘Scandalous’ also dropping today as part of their 2pack project ‘V’.
‘Flawless’ is accompanied by the official video directed by Gabriella Plotkin and Derek Matar.
On the lead track ‘Flawless’, the duo are rejecting the rigidity of society’s expectations of masculinity while hitching every line to their unique hip-hop production.“This is a concise statement on the duality of man and the power of self-affirmation. We want our fans to be empowered by how they look instead of burdened so that they don’t look to material objects and false ideals for validation,” the duo state. “Being yourself is always the most fashionable choice.” The track is accompanied by the official video.
Chicago duo LOWERLIPDRIP’s – AKA BlackrobeBLACKROBES and Dew Haydn – powerful, experimental productions and smooth, insightful flows immediately caught the attention of Pitchfork, Fader, and Lyrical Lemonade upon their debut 2pack in 2019. After growing up together and coming into young adulthood, LLD expand their sound and advocate for rebellion on their two-track single. The two, who identity as gender-fluid (they/them), have been highly active in Chicago’s activism and LGBTQ scenes, establishing a devout following through their tasteful but politically charged lyrics and jarring production.
Julien Baker announces new Album. Shares First Track/Video 'Faith Healer'
Julien Baker will release her third studio album, Little Oblivions, on February 26 via Matador Records.
Today she reveals the first look at the album via Faith Healer, which introduces the exhilarating, widescreen musical palette and infectious spirit of risk-taking found on Little Oblivions, a transformative sonic shift from Baker’s more spare and intimate previous work.
“I think that “Faith Healer” is a song about vices, both the obvious and the more insidious ways that they show up in the human experience”, says Baker. “I started writing this song 2 years ago and it began as a very literal examination of addiction. For a while, I only had the first verse, which is just a really candid confrontation of the cognitive dissonance a person who struggles with substance abuse can feel— the overwhelming evidence that this substance is harming you, and the counterintuitive but very real craving for the relief it provides. When I revisited the song I started thinking about the parallels between the escapism of substance abuse and the other various means of escapism that had occupied a similar, if less easily identifiable, space in my psyche.
There are so many channels and behaviors that we use to placate discomfort unhealthily which exist outside the formal definition of addiction. I (and so many other people) are willing to believe whomever— a political pundit, a preacher, a drug dealer, an energy healer— when they promise healing, and how that willingness, however genuine, might actually impede healing.”
Little Oblivions was recorded in Baker’s hometown of Memphis, Tennessee between December 2019 and January 2020. It was engineered by Calvin Lauber and mixed by Craig Silvey (The National, Florence & the Machine, Arcade Fire). Baker’s tactile guitar and piano playing are enriched with newfound textures encompassing bass, drums, synthesizers, banjo and mandolin, with nearly all of the instruments performed by Baker. The album weaves unflinching autobiography with assimilated experience and often hard-won observations from the past few years, taking Baker’s capacity for starkly galvanizing storytelling to breathtaking new heights.
Little Oblivions is the follow up to Baker’s 2017 sophomore album and first on Matador Turn Out The Lights. The New York Times said the LP is “the work of a songwriter who has resonated with an international audience (…), the rare second album that, despite new self-consciousness, stretches beyond an unspoiled debut to reach for even bigger things, with all its passion intact”. The Sunday Times said “the mix of detached vocals, lush arrangements and laid-bare post-mortems on love, loss, dysfunction and acceptance is devastating”. Baker went on to perform songs from the album on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert and CBS This Morning.
In 2018 Baker formed boygenius with Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus in 2018. The resulting eponymous EP and joint North American tour made for one of the most celebrated and talked about musical communions of 2018, highlighting Baker at the forefront of a burgeoning generation of era-defining artists.
An intense and immersive performer, her live shows were described by The New Yorker as “…. hushed, reverential. The only sounds you hear between songs are her fingers as she tweaks the tuning on her electric guitar, scattered whispers between friends, and the rustling as the crowd waits patiently for Baker to start strumming again”.
4AD is delighted to welcome Erika de Casier to the family
4AD is delighted to welcome Erika de Casier to the family, today she releases her label debut, the single No Butterflies, No Nothing.
Born in Portugal and raised in Denmark, de Casier is an ally of the Regelbau collective and also something of a creative polymath, having written, produced and released her debut album, Essentials, through her own Independent Jeep label last year. Critically-lauded, Essentials graced Best of 2019 lists at Mixmag, Gorilla vs. Bear, FACT, Dummy, and Crack Magazine.
Quickly following the success of her debut album, ‘No Butterflies, No Nothing’, produced by de Casier and Natal Zaks, see the Copenhagen-based musician continue to address affairs of the heart. “It’s about wanting to fall in love with someone, but the butterflies are just not coming,” de Casier explains.
Also taking on director duties for the single’s accompanying video, she says, “I wanted to create a sort of “perfect” realm where the underlying drama is what cracks the picture. When I was a kid, I used to hurry home from school so I could watch “Days of Our Lives” and I really think it’s funny how soap operas depict characters’ lives in a such an openly overdramatic and unrealistic way – it’s all about the drama. I was also inspired by romantic period films like Pride & Prejudice and Sense & Sensibility, so to mix the two aesthetics with my own was really interesting.”
JARV IS.... presents a Cinematic Tour
In response to the group itself not being able to hit the road at the moment, JARV IS… will be sending their ‘BEYOND THE PALE… LIVE FROM THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH’ film on tour around the UK in Nov/Dec 2020, complete with additional filmed ‘support’ and ‘finale’. Tickets will also be available to watch the show online for the duration of the tour dates only.
The film represents the only complete live performance of the JARV IS… ‘Beyond The Pale’ album. It will be screened in each city/town that JARV IS… were scheduled to play, in small venues or where that’s not possible, Everyman Cinemas.
Filmed at Peak Cavern in Derbyshire, UK, the filmed performance brings Beyond The Pale full circle, as two of the tracks on the album (“Must I Evolve?” and “Sometimes I am Pharaoh”) were recorded at this very location when JARV IS… here in 2018. The performance was filmed and directed by Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, known for their work on Nick Cave’s film 20,000 Days on Earth.
“Beyond the Pale was written (& partially recorded) in front of a live audience, so it feels extra-strange not to be able to take it on the road at the moment,” Jarvis Cocker explains. “Fortunately, our friends Iain & Jane suggested a way round the problem: set up our equipment in a cave & they would film the results. We have invented a new way of playing a concert.”
Beyond the Pale by JARV IS… was the first original music from Jarvis Cocker since 2009’s Further Complications. It has been globally hailed as an instant classic, with praise stretching from The New York Times to NME, Rolling Stone to Le Monde.
JARV IS… a band featuring Jarvis Cocker (vocals, guitar, percussion), Serafina Steer (harp, keyboards, vocals), Emma Smith (violin, guitar vocals), Andrew McKinney (bass, vocals), Jason Buckle (synthesizer & electronic treatments) & Adam Betts (drums, percussion, vocals).
The Lemon Twigs Share Stripped-Down Live Performance Of ‘Hog’
Today, The Lemon Twigs shared a special live performance of ‘Hog’, a song from the group’s third full-length album Songs For The General Public (out now).
Filmed in a dance studio off Broadway in New York, Michael D’Addario leads his brother Brian in an impassioned stripped-down rendition of the warped ballad.
Songs For The General Public also features the singles ‘Hell On Wheels’, ‘No One Holds You (Closer Than The One You Haven’t Met)’, ‘Live In Favor Of Tomorrow’, ‘Moon’ and ‘The One’. The D’Addario brothers wrote, recorded and produced the record entirely on tape at their Long Island home studio, Sonora Studios in Los Angeles.
Brian and Michael D’Addario first emerged as The Lemon Twigs in 2016 with their debut LP Do Hollywood, whose show stopping melodies mined from every era of rock quickly earned fans in Elton John, Questlove, and Jack Antonoff. Go To School, the ambitious 15-track coming-of-age opus, followed in 2018 and solidified the band’s reputation for building grand walls of sound around an audacious concept.
