This town needs a real music festival. We have tons of various film festivals. But no real week-long blow out ala SXSW. Someone needs to start organizing a music fest that showcases District-Baltimore talent. Wouldn’t it be cool to see the Evens alongside BackYard alongside Dan Deacon alongside Head-Roc?

This show–from last night–comes close. Or this D.C. band showcase which DCist writes up. In the meantime, the Lullabyes blog has pretty awesome MP3s of Beach House live at SXSW. [Note: you have to scroll down the site to find it]. Or you can just go here.

–photo courtesy of Lullabyes.

This just came into my inbox: a new MP3 from John Reis‘ new band the Night Marchers. Reis is most famous as the captain of the mighty Rocket From the Crypt.

Here’s some of the p.r.:

Hot off the release of ROCKET FROM THE CRYPT’S R.I.P. CD/DVD, John “Speedo” Reis has announced THE NIGHT MARCHERS plans for the road that include a trip to SXSW just before their maiden tour around the band’s debut of See You In Magic on April 22nd via Swami Records/Vagrant Records. The Night Marchers is John Reis on guitar and vocals (Rocket From The Crypt, Hot Snakes, Drive Like Jehu), Gar Wood on guitar (Hot Snakes, Beehive & the Barracudas), Jason Kourkounis on drums (Hot Snakes, Mule, Delta 72), and Tommy Kitsos on bass (CPC Gangbangs).

The freebie–”Who’s Lady R U?“–is a burner. Enjoy.

For your pleasure, a new Notwist MP3 direct from the publicist. Here’s a bit of the p.r.:

St. Nicholas has come early this year. Or is he just very late? It’s best not to dwell too long on questions such as these when it pertains to The Notwist and just be thankful when these moments come to pass. And what, pray tell, are you to be thankful for exactly? The Devil, You + Me, the brand new eleven-track album from the enigmatic German trio.

The Notwist recorded portions of the album with the ANDROMEDA MEGA EXPRESS ORCHESTRA, a way out, 20+ headed classical orchestra that specializes in exciting and sometimes bizarre avant classic interpretations of modern jazz, which compliments perfectly the album’s themes of love, loss, alienation, planetary alignment, the positive side to deception, death, refusal and the titular Devil.

The MP3 is actually better than all the six-years-in-the-making hype, recalling prime Hood and all sorts of desolate, sad, earnest things. Totally worth the download. I forgot how much I missed these kinds of songs.

Yeah, so the Bag seems to be the Food for Animals blog these days, but this time we’ve got FREE SHIT: The Maryland-based hip-hop group has recorded with Teutonic noise-heroes Faust, and they’re giving one song away. The deets from Tim Jones, FFA’s publicist:

The group recently toured Europe opening for … Aphex Twin and Mick Harris (Napalm Death) and were invited by legendary Krautrock band Faust to record at their Paper Factory studios in Scheer, Germany. The mp3 included, Planet Say, is one of the songs from the Faust sessions.

Download: “Planet Say” (MP3)

Did anybody see the La Casa show last night?

From the Apes‘ Web site dated February 4:

“Ghost Games is here (sort of)! For this week only, you can buy Ghost Games exclusively from us two weeks before it’s available in stores (official release date is Feb 19). Yes, the first Apes full-length since 2005 can finally be yours. CD only for now, vinyl coming very soon.

After Friday, you will have to wait until February 19th to buy it from our label, Gypsy Eyes Records, or of course you can buy it directly from us on our tour that starts February 12.”

Sweet. Still not sold? Haven’t heard the Apes’ pure awesomeness? Here’s some songs off the new one:

“Beat of the Double”

“Mr. Fairer”

And…a demo for “Finish Line.”

Just got news–probably old news to some of you–that indie blog darling St. Vincent (aka Annie Clark) is coming to D.C. in February. She will be playing at the Rock and Roll Hotel on February 26. You can check out her awesome solo turn on the Black Cab sessions. But a stripped down St. Vincent is hardly the point is it?

So here–you can listen to the full St. Vincent treatment on “Now, Now.”

Being unemployed and all, I’ve had a lot of time to sit around and think about the past. Ya’ know, the good old days of 2002, when I was but a rosy-cheeked college twerp and dance-punk still ruled the minds and hearts of music-loving tweens accross D.C.

Most recently I’ve been thinking about Measles Mumps Rubella. More than a few of my peers wrote off this post-punk quartet as “art-fag,” chastising them as a weaker version of Black Eyes and latecomers to the extra-percussion fad. But in their first incarnation MMR were pretty good. Vocalist Brett Lyman spouted unintelligible static through his heavilly delayed microphone and the rest of the group kicked up a pretty ambitious bit of noise before they ditched Lyman, set sail for Brooklyn, and eventually disbanded.

If you missed them, don’t be too hard on yourself. It was hard to hear any of their music–mainly because they were so f’ing self-conscious about selling it. I remember having to haggle with the guitarist to buy a copy of their demo and having to pull teeth again to get the “Fountain of Youth” single AT THE RECORD RELEASE SHOW.

This trend continues–though not at MMR’s behest. Last week I stumbled onto their MySpace page and found–much to my surprise–that the band has been attempting to posthumously upload their entire back catalog–including the Fantastic Success LP, “Zusammen Mit Motown” 7-inch, and “Fountain of Youth” 12-inch–onto iTunes along with the unreleased last gasp “Dynamic Disaster.” For one reason or another Fantastic Success is all that’s up there. However, the band has kindly posted a bunch of these tracks up on their MySpace page for people to listen to until the whole iDebacle is resolved.

Pour a little out for 2002 and have listen.

Here’s a live video filmed at the Warehouse Next Door:

Vandaveer drops three holiday tunes. All takes on classics. You can listen to them here.

Pitchfork has a song off the upcoming Beach House album, due in February on local indie Carpark. You can listen to “Gila” here.

The 2001 compilation Dublab Presents: Freeways is a curious time capsule: With its pre-9/11 sweetness, lingering dot-com optimism and ProTools-y introspection, the music predated the iPod by a few months but easily matched the friendly/techy vibe of Apple’s little white boxes. I can’t hear these tracks without thinking about harvesting MP3s from proto-blogs that prompted pure discovery, not necessarily mass file-sharing or conspicuous song-leakage.

But enough yucky nostalgia: The point here is that the era’s gentle electronica (call it dub, ambient, whatever) can definitely sound quite thin in retrospect, but the Dublab folks proved to have superior tastes, and they treated Freeways like a statement of purpose: Dntel is on there, as well as Madlib (as Yesterday’s New Quintet), Daedelus, John Tejada, and others.

The LA label/collective is now making the album available for the first time iTunes. Some freebies:

Downloads:
Languis & Fer Chloca “The Sky Below” (MP3)
Ammoncontact “Chord (Parts 1-2)” (MP3)