Local DJ faves Jesse Tittsworth and Will Eastman and a group of partners are opening up their own space on U Street, the Going Out Gurus report at The Post. Expect the 250- to 300-capacity U Street Music Hall to open early next year at 1115 U St., formerly the Cue Bar. “The whole place is going to be a dance floor,” Eastman told the Gurus. “There will be a few booths and bar stools, but it’s a dance club. It’s for dancing, not sitting.” Eastman will still be hosting dance nights elsewhere though, like his popular Bliss night at the Black Cat.

From the Dept. of Ex-Washingtonians: Ted Leo And The Pharmacists, whose last two labels stopped releasing music, are now signed to Matador Records. And the dubby, noisy group Mi Ami—which, like Leo & Co., was on Touch & Go—has signed with Thrill Jockey. The San Francisco outfit includes two members of the disbanded Black Eyes.

Read More “Music News Roundup, No Sitting Edition” »

Bootlegging a concert used to be a real pain in the ass. Well, it was in the mid-’90s, at least. My cousin used to use a pair of stereo microphones that were sewn into the collar of his flannel shirt and then connected to a minidisc recorder (remember those?) stashed in his jacket. This setup–some of it rather bulky–had to be smuggled into the club under the bouncer’s nose.

All of this for a noisy, chatty, tape of a Grant Lee Buffalo concert.

Disclosed Mp3 must have built a better mousetrap, though.
They certainly don’t seem to be mired in the microphone->chums->minidisc->cassette deck quagmire that plagued fans a few years ago. Instead, the blog has been turning around decent quality audience-recordings of local shows within just a few days of the performance. Right now there are Mp3s of True Womanhood, Laughing Man, BLDGS, and Hume, as well as some out of town groups like Mi Ami. And the whole access-via-downloading thing also knocks out another aggravating vestigial part of the bootleg process–trading via the postal service.

After a year or so of relative silence, DC/Baltimore/Atlanta-based Hoss Records has revamped its website, cleaned up its game, and released its fall release schedule. It was worth the wait, though.

The label has just released the first installment in it’s “Techno” 12″ series, which features Mi Ami (which includes two former members of DC’s Black Eyes) performing two side-long quasi-covers of dubstep pioneer Shackelton’s “Blood on my Hands.” It’s a step in a different direction for the band, embracing slowly evolving synthesizer drones and tweaked 808-style bass, rather than squealing noise-guitar solos.

Read More “Hoss Records Releases New Mi Ami 12″/Announces Ecstatic Sunshine LP” »

Medications: When Medications performed at Fort Reno a few years back, I told drummer/bassist Chad Molter that I thought his band’s new songs sounded sort of like mid-’70s Fleetwood Mac, in a good way. I’m not sure he really liked hearing that, though. At any rate, when they played Friday, at this funky art-space/theater, the new songs were a bit more heavier and more progressive. So, maybe more like Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac?

Earthless w/ J Mascis: The San Diego-based psych-rock trio, augmented here by Dinosaur Jr guitarist J. Mascis, basically improvised a 30-minute space-rock crescendo that never stopped, it just got louder and louder.

Metallica: Metallica is pretty much the last of the superhuman mega-bands, at least in my opinion. Any personal obligations that they might have as grown men with families seem totally secondary to their lives as rock stars. Metallica will always go the extra mile for rock. Like, if you’re sick and dying and you love Metallica, I feel like there’s still a chance they would show up in your hospital room and surprise you with an autographed guitar. Not a lot of bands will do that anymore, certainly not a lot of the bands playing at SXSW. But the line was long–all the way around the block–so I skipped the show.
Read More “SXSW Recap: Friday” »

I’m no Brandon Wu, clearly, but I snapped some photos of Mi Ami over at the Mexican Summer party yesterday. I was really floored when I saw these guys play in DC a few weeks ago, and also pretty much floored at this show too. If you want, read Cole Goins’ BPB interview with them here and check out his review of the band’s record, Watersports, here.

More pics below:
Read More “Mi Ami @ SXSW” »

If your scaled-back, ramen noodle budget allows for such luxuries as rock and roll shows on a week night, then the Velvet Lounge is offering up a doozy this evening: Not only are Baltimore hip-hop knob twiddlers Food For Animals and cacophonous a capella goddesses Lexie Mountain Boys on the bill, but San Francisco dub-punkers Mi Ami will also revisit the District (two of the band’s members, guitarist/vocalist Daniel Martin-McCormick and bassist Jacob Long, were both in the raucous DC Dischord band Black Eyes).

Mi Ami is in the midst of a massive tour to support their new album, Watersports, which has been absolutely killing our stereos since it dropped in mid-February. Equal parts urgent and hypnotic, chaotic and funky, Watersports is a truly compelling, relevant rock record that goes well beyond the wealth of genres it references. You can preview a cut from the new album on Quarterstick’s Web site via a download of the awesome track “New Guitar,” which is discussed further in the following interview.

The band dropped off Baltimore tour-mates Thank You last night after a show at Floristree, ending the co-tour and beginning the circuit back west on their own, stopping off at SXSW along way.

Washington City Paper recently caught up with Daniel while the group was on the road from the Northwest down into California, which didn’t bode well for a cell-phone conversation throughout their mountainous trek. Despite a steady stream of dropped connections and static-laden reception, Daniel was kind enough to chat about the tour and the new Mi Ami record. Full text after the jump, details for the show at Velvet Lounge below.

Mi Ami
Food For Animals
Lexi Mountain Boys
@ Velvet Lounge
915 U Street, DC
9pm
$8
18+
Read More “Interview: Mi Ami” »

Way back before the internet caused record release dates to become elusive, abstract, and largely disregarded by the music loving public, Tuesday was the big day. And whether it began at midnight while you were pounding on the door of Tower Records (now deceased) or hurrying over to an indie-store like DCCD (also deceased) after work, so long as something decent to listen to came out, Tuesday was a day to look forward to. This column, which will include brief reviews of new records on the day that they’re set to be physically released, is an attempt to get back to those hallowed pre-broadband days when gratification was just a little bit more delayed and when Tuesday rocked.

To set the mood, I’ve included this clip from The Rondelles song for which this column in named.

Mi Ami: Echonoecho 12″ (Quarterstick)

San Francisco’s Mi Ami, seen regularly on this blog, drops a new 12″ teaser for its upcoming full-length Watersports. The ingredients are the same as usual–feedback, delay, plenty of roto toms–but they’re lovingly assembled into an extended eight-minute dub-punk odyssey that soothes with one hand but uses the other to slap you in the face with stereocilia-ravaging guitar. The flip is a deconstructed dub version, spruced up by some spacey synth drones. Overall, an excellent precursor to a full-length that is sure to be one of ’09s finest afro-technological/mystic-punk records. (Aaron Leitko)

Pitchfork is streaming the a-side in it’s entirety here.

Lithops: Ye Viols! (Thrill Jockey)
Jan St. Werner made his name producing squelchy beats for the electronic groups Mouse on Mars and Von Sudenfed, but Ye Viols!, which compiles several scores that Werner composed for art installations, is mostly just squelch. If I had to guess what the accompanying art works looked like based on songs like “apps 1″ and “indutech”, I would probably guess that they involved either a room full of giant orbs or SEM images of bare-scalped Mutek attendees. But when it comes to conjuring an abstract geometry of blips and hums, Werner might as well be Frank Gehry and the songs here, weird as they are, have enough juice to stand alone outside of the gallery. (AL)

Thrill Jockey is currently streaming the whole record here.

Group Bombino: Guitars From Agadez Vol. 2 (Sublime Frequencies)

Not every African band has a revolutionary backstory, but this one does. In early 2007, Sublime Frequencies co-founder Hisham Mayet discovered Group Bombino in Agadez, a Niger city accessible only by traveling a landmine littered road with a military escort, according to the label. Mayet recorded the group—led by guitar genius Omara Mochtar— live in Agadez and the surrounding desert with generator-powered equipment, and pressed 1500 LPs of the music that was made.

The first half of the record features an almost mournful Mochtar playing acoustic or “dry” guitar, his rhythms punched out with handclaps, the songs sung out in layered voices. The second half is reserved for the thumpers, with Moctar plugged in persistently sustaining a groove, trilling notes over the thick bass. The LP joins two other recent Sublime Frequencies releases that focus on modern African guitar sounds and the Tuareg scene. Years from now, Tuareg may be viewed as this century’s new Delta or Mississippi Hill Country, with Mochtar in the role of R.L. Burnside and Mayat as its Alan Lomax. (Jason Cherkis)

Every musical clique/community/scene has to has to have its middle period. You know, that time when young musicians break up their bands and undergo a laborious process of deep self-examination and artistic reinvention. This usually involves “getting into jazz.”

Well, former Black Eyes members Daniel Martin-McCormick and Jacob Long are throwing that shit right out the window. In Mi Ami they get straight back to what they’ve always done best–that is to say, deep, deep rhythm. The San Francisco based trio, which also includes Damon Palermo, will have a new single,Echononecho, and an album, Watersports, arriving January 27th and February 17 respectively on Quarterstick records (a partner label of Touch and Go).

Echononecho
1. Echononecho
2. Version

Watersports
1. Echononecho
2. The Man In Your House
3. New Guitar
4. Pressure
5. Freed From Sin
6. White Wife
7. Peacetalks/Downer

Traditionally I wimp out during autumn. As surely as the leaves turn yellow my listening habits slip toward fey and mopey Englishmen—you know, Belle and Sebastian, The Zombies, The Clientele. It’s time to put on the knit scarf, to stand next to an empty soccer field and gaze wistfully into nowhere, to renew that SSRI prescription. Come over to my house, we can watch some Tony Richardson movies together.

But maybe not this year.

San Francisco’s Mi Ami, which includes former Black Eyes members Dan and Jacob, have just released a new 12-inch called “Ark of the Covenant.” You can buy it from the Dischord Web site. Suffice it to say, this is not a fey record and though I generally disdain terms like “banger,” “thumper,” and “heater,” they all apply here.

But don’t take my word for it. Here’s what the Dischord site says:
“Heavy and frantic dub punk from San Francisco’s Mi Ami, featuring Dan and Jacob of Dischord’s Black Eyes. A spacious exploration of 21st century paranoia and psycho-sexual body terror. “I don’t wanna live, I wish I was dead.” Debut release from Lovers Rock. Limited to 500 copies, 45rpm, 140 gram vinyl, hand screened covers.”

And if you still need convincing: