LA’s Not Not Fun is definitely positioned as the most interesting hub of creative activity in recent times right now. They’ve 150+ releases under their belt in various formats and just a few years. I’ve always sensed that Pocahaunted were the main dish (not musically, but spiritually?) and after a short search session it’s not shocking to find that the label is run by Amanda Brown (of Pocahaunted) and hubby Britt Brown.

Not Not Fun releases “noise, experimental, psych-folk, spazzy/weird/art-damaged no-wavey inspired rock, math rock, noise rock, lo-fi, acoustic, drone to everything in between” in limited packages and their artwork is supercool. I’m repeating my thesis that artistically they’re making a bigger impact than they’re supposed to, given that their music is super leftfield and hard to get into. Yet they’ve become one of the main movers in the psych-folk-drone scene and what started as a small label is now pushing into vaster territory. Kudos!

Here’s 2 select tracks from the NNF compilation at Impose Magazine. You can get the full zip here.

Plastic palm trees. Beach scene snowglobes. Airbrushed neon sunset hotel paintings. All shining examples of potent Fake Escapism at work, in real life. And if you’ve ever wondered what the audio equivalent of this kind of cheap coastal utopian simulacrum is, take a good listen to the recorded works of Mr. Matt Mondanile aka Ducktails.

We do our best, there’s just a SHIT TON of entertainment-oriented hustlers out here, so there’s a looooooong line of bands and actors and t-shirt designers and record labels and writers and bullshit all busting their ass for their 15 minutes of fame, which is very overwhelming for the average media-consumer. Impose

It’s official! New Jersey native Ducktails has made this summer’s soundtrack. Matthew Mondanile has the brightest psychedelic sound with just the right amount of tolerable noise on a hot summer day and the tropical warmth of the Föhn winds. Not Not Fun finally delivers it fully, after good ideas and bad executions or vice versa. This might be the culmination of a point in time in music history, of the so-called “lo-fi tropical psych-drone” sound.

image by capitodeneuve

Here’s some seriously warm, wobbly, surfy, tropical sounding lo-fi gems that have totally captured our attention! Dripping with such melty, melodic yet slightly tripped out perfection. Ducktails had a lot going for it before we even heard the music, the name obviously (!), the great cover art by Jan Anderzen (Kemialliset Ystavat) and the fact that it was mastered by Graham Lambkin of The Shadow Ring already lead us to believe there might be some kind of magic being brewed under the colorful, inviting cover, so we threw this on the stereo right away and it’s been beyond the perfect soundtrack for the bright and sizzling sunshine days we’ve been baking in for the last couple weeks. Aquarius

Let’s seal the day with another soulful track. I couldn’t post anything about MJ in the MJ-death-craze-fest, but I stumbled upon Mark de Clive-Lowe’s cover of I can’t Help it with Lady Alma on the vocals. Check it out and comment if you like/hate.

Forgot to post this gem which I caught on twitter yesterday by beatmaker AFTA-1 whose 2008 album I catch myself going back to too much recently. Done in conjunction with the GAS-D , features beats from usual suspects like Dilla, Platinum Pied Pipers, Dam Funk as well as relatively unknown artists and of course AFTA-1 himself. Great sluggish hip-hop to bop your stoned head to on hot days.

(Tracklist & Full Release)

Our new fave producer after his Fader Mix with close companion Bullion, UK beatmaker Paul White has just released his debut LP “The Strange Dreams of Paul White” which marryies everything we love from prog rock to BBC samples, with quirky beats and Brit humour.

He’s a library music maker for BBC as a day job, and thanks to all the BBC Radiophonic stuff hunting the British psyche, it’s no wonder his dreams are strange. Yet the US Hiphop influence (through Madlib and Dilla) is felt through the album, so they’re not as eerie as Ghost Box offerings or the Moon Wiring Club. One of the hottest names nowadays, and another contender for the “artist who does what I would do if I were making tunes” category. Essential even if you don’t like deep abstract hiphop. 8/10

But, perhaps because this is the lovechild of an obsessive collector, here it actually manages to provide the album with its greatest appeal. Instead of sounding as though it’s all been thrown together, the tracks tease and tantalize, making you want to press the rewind button and listen to them again in an attempt to explore the hidden meaning contained within each little snippet. The Quietus Review

Who are your top three Hip Hop producers and why?
Paul White: At the moment, in no order:
Karriem Riggins – incredible musical, soulful, ill style, amazing grooves!
Georgia Anne Muldrow – she can do everything, so soulful!
Madlib – so many styles, all ill as hell! British Hiphop interview

The twitterverse is getting crowded, here are some of our latest finds:

@Western Vinyl label home to Balmorhea, IDM wiz @Richard Devine, Noise maker @Carlos Giffoni, @Okkyung Lee the downtown cello player, Pianist @Vijay Iyer another downtown jazz figure, @Family Vineyard label, Composer @Rhys Chatham, @Drone Magazine, @Ken Vandermark, @Sawako, @Lawrence English, @Important Records, @Goon Magazine, @total vibration (Thor’s Hammer boss), @Hypnotic Brass Band, @Pauline Oliveros, @Pi Recordings, the wonderful jazz/everything blog @destination out, and up and coming jazz drummer @Tyshawn Sorey.

(both via @Richard Devine)

David Toop – Making Sounds from Expression Design on Vimeo.

(via @Lawrence English)

Fisheye Village from sawako on Vimeo.

The Young 12 string guitar master James Blackshaw takes on piano in another enchanting album of five songs spanning 50 minutes. The piano pieces are cool, yet we still prefer him fingerpicking his guitar.

“The balance of gravity and playfulness in Blackshaw’s labyrinthine music owes a debt to Borges, which he paid by naming his compilation of experimental music for solo stringed instruments Garden of Forking Paths. Channeling lush, idiosyncratic classical guitar (think Fahey, Basho, Kottke) with the hypnotic rigor of ambient and post-minimal aesthetics, he gins up deep rumbles on the lower strings, glimmering melodies on the higher ones, evoking again a pair of metaphysical gates through which mysteries pass.” Fanzine

+ Lulla single from the upcoming Tinariwen LP. (The Guardian)

+ HRO’s Carles analyses : U, Me and Every Concert we Attend one of this year’s best writeups? (via yvynyl)

+ The Checkout interviews NYC downtown trumpet wiz Dave Douglas.

+ Meltdown Fest Coverage via More Intelligent Life ~ Drowned in Sound and also Ornette Coleman vs the Master Musicians of Jajouka (mapsadaisical)

+ Explode Into Colors – Paper (Hot Sax Version) (XLR8R)

+ Lee Scratch Perry interview (Social Stereotype)

+ This week in Metal on Brooklyn Vegan, also YOURfLESh magazine’s metal coverage.

+ 2 songs to sample from Fat Freddy’s Drop’s new joint (Club Cortez)

+ 2009’s overlooked albums (emusic)

A great split sampler by Italy’s Africantape Records and Chicago’s Sickroom Records with lots of quirky math-rock, noise rock and other kinds of experimental rock from Them, Roaring Twenties, Bear Claw and Three Second Kiss who are currently supporting Shellac, L’ocell Mare solo project of Cheval de Frise guitarist Thomas Benvolet, Pink Mountain who just released their Sick Room debut soon, Aucan and more. Best of all it’s freely available from the coolest music website around, bandcamp.

Image cred : David Lyle “They say that graffiti is popular these days”.

Finally, some decent instrumental rock that doesn’t go the way of creating bland, hypersentimental electronically enhanced post-rock. We were truly bored out of our asses with that stuff and it was starting to feel like that time when everyone in your highschool was trying to become a poet.

Melbourne’s Margins paint grim and lonely pictures avoiding post-rock cliches like going “epic”, which perhaps makes it a bit boring for the new generations, who want breakdowns and booms. Sounding rather minimal and prolonged, Margins create somber moods with plain melodies and great interplay between instruments. This does in the end make the album suffer from “sounding the same throughout” as pabanks has noted here; yet the twangy guitar is still a joy to behold and for a debut this sounds pretty solid. 7.5

Out on Low Transit Industries.