Moons >> Saw you in a dream screaming in the dark

Moons - "Waves At Night"

(No Recordings, 2012)

I got this song via Under The Radar magazine's free mp3 sampler #44.  I bought the mag to give to my sister, since it has Grimes on the cover and it named Wild Nothing's Nocturne as the best album of 2012.  (That's my pick for album of the year too, by a wide margin.)  It's such a good issue that I bought it despite the fact that the phrases "Passion Pit" and "Sleigh Bells" appear on the cover.  Moons is apparently a one-man project by a guy named Patrick Canaday from Atlanta.  The vocodered vocals at the beginning are presumably by Canaday, and I read that the female vocals are by some people named Lorely Rodriguez & Arielle Guitar.  Looks like chillwave ain't dead yet...

This effing tight song is the b-side on Moons' debut 7" called "Bloody Mouths," which is the first-ever release on a label called No Recordings.  The 7" is limited to 250 copies on cream-colored vinyl, and the covers are made via hand-stamping; see several pics of it here.  Unfortunately, it retails for $10, but I would presume it'll be repressed on black vinyl at a much cheaper price once the demand begins to rise.  i think demand will indeed rise, since this single seems to be getting lots of attention on various music sites / blogs.

Here's the video for "Bloody Mouths," subtitled "(Watchtower Version)" for some reason, though it appears to be the only available version:

A rather daring and probably illegal performance art piece by Chris Burden; apparent inspiration for Trumans Water's "Skyjacker" 7"

Thur. Feb. 21: Saw Caspian, Junius, Aiua at Siberia.  It was very loud, and the club played Hüsker Dü's New Day Rising in between bands to ensure that it would not get any quieter.  Even local instro-rockers Aiua, who I had remembered as being quite atmospheric and spacey from seeing them at Dragon's Den, were aggressive and almost metal.  Two of their four members were shirtless by the end of their set.  Junius played my two favorite songs of theirs, "A Word Could Kill Her" and (as their final song) "The Fires Of Antediluvia" (a.k.a. "The Antediluvian Fire").  Their drumer wore a Deftones shirt.  A guy from Caspian wrote out a setlist for us afterwards from memory.  The merch table was so immense (covered the entire pool table and then some) that I took a pic of it.  I would say it rivaled Boris' for the most impressive merch table I've ever encountered, though The XX's from a few weeks ago is also in the discussion.

Planets with similar climates: Chromatics - "Lady" (2011), Maria Minerva - "Luvcool" (~2010), Memoryhouse - "Sleep Patterns" (2009), Julee Cruise & Angelo Badalamenti - "Falling" (1989), School Of Seven Bells - "Reappear" (2012), Grimes - "Skin" (2011), Makeup And Vanity Set feat. Jasmin Kaset - "Homecoming" (2012).

Francis 7 >> My heart began to splinter

Francis 7 - "Red Roses"
(unreleased[?], ca. 2003)

For my first song post, here's a gem by a Miami band named after a character in the 1976 post-quasi-erotica dystopian escapism fluff-noir movie Logan's Run.  (No woman in history will ever be more gorgeous than Jenny Agutter was in that flick, which I hear is unfortunately being remade.)

I downloaded an mp3 excerpt of this song in '03 or '04, and have played it an alarming number of times over the ensuing years, always wondering what the rest of the song would sound like.  Being a New Orleanian, the fact that they were a band from the Southern U.S. in the '00s, rather than one from, say, England in 1992, was very intriguing to me.  I talked to the lead guy from F7, Omar, in an AOL chatroom for an hour or two one night back then.  The main thing I remember him saying was that John Lever of The Chameleons was his favorite drummer ever.  I asked him about some other Florida bands, like Swivel Stick and Stella Luna, and maybe Whirlaway.  We mainly talked about shoegaze-related gear stuff like delay and reverb, and he was super-talkative and extremely knowledgeable/passionate/perfectionist about the whole thing, not unlike a Kevin Shields or a Scott Cortez.  Someone on RYM sent me this mp3 the other day, after I had given up hope of ever finding it.  Apparently it's only available on a compilation CD put out by the (defunct?) website Auralgasms, called The Beat Of Discontent. And much to my shock, I found out today that the band is still around, and on their Facebook page, they say "Well, it looks like "Red Roses" is a song that just won't die. Kind of appropriate! Version 3 to be recorded soon, or Raf may kill me..."  So apparently the one I'm posting is version 2, and my excerpt mp3 (with a different vocal track and other small differences) was version 1.  TMI, I know.


Update, 3/29/11: Here is the original mp3 excerpt that I got in '03; I just recently found it on an old mix CD that I made, dated 8/17/04.  I love how it charges out of the gate with that drum roll and synth wash, which is why I was so surprised to hear the long, subduded buildup in the full-length version: 

If you like this song, check out: The Douglas Fir - "Unwelcome" (1999), Kitchens Of Distinction - "Railwayed" (1991), The House Of Love - "Feel" (1992), National Skyline - "Some Will Say" (2001), Antarctica - "Absence" (1999).