San Francisco

You already know what to expect from Barn Owl if you’re familiar with labels like Not Not Fun, Root Strata or Foxglove : lots of fuzzy guitar processing, ritualistic slow doom, psychedelic folk and mournful drones shifting and evolving into complex soundscapes.

After two CDRs on their own Root Strata label last year Jefre Cantu-Ledesma’s The Alps with ARP and Scott Hewicker became our favourite drone/soundscape artists. That doesn’t help explain why I missed their Type Records debut III, on the contrary it makes it more mysterious, doesn’t it?.

The Mp3 Experiment by pranksters extraordinaire Improv Everywhere is taking place in San Francisco today @ 2:00 PM and tomorrow the same time at Chicago. The Mp3 Experiment is an annual organisation where you meet other agents at a predestined place and play a prerecorded mp3 at precisely the same time.

* UK’s The Invisible
* Wooden Shjips‘ Self Titled debut on Holy Mountain.
* A chaotic mixture of indie/acoustic folk/noise rock and electronics from Amasser.
* A little bit quality hiphop from Chicago’s Copperpot, friend of UK rapper Braintax.

Whooo, it’s time to review one of my favourite CDs from 2007 just before it gets a regular western world release on Galapagos4, a leftfield hiphop label that slipped through my filters this year, with artists like Mike Gao and Mestizo.

Make space for Mr. Vonstroke’s debut CD “Beware of the Bird” on his own Dirtybird Records. I generally expect 2-3 good electronic dance albums per month these days and I was expecting a standard CD with 1-2 good tracks and lots of fillers, but oh how mistaken I was.