Gifts from Enola

August 6th, 1945. The Enola Gay's big beautiful hulking steel frame glides through the sky over the land of the sun, ready to give birth to her little boy. Her belly swings open exposing the boy. The boy decends on on its mounts like a child crowning. Then, release. Rushing air, a mother fleeing the presence of her newborn. Enola has left her gift. She has changed the world.

This band just released a split with You.May.Die.In.The.Desert. I highly recomend picking it up here. I have been listening to it more frequently than other music as of late. It is really great music to rock out to when you are also trying to think. The lack of lyrics allows the sound to penetrate your subconcious on a sublime level.

I present another gift from Enola... The Suns Condolences

The Uprising of Post-Punk

Call it Post-Punk, Math Rock, Instrumental Wierd Stuff, Etc... It seems I have been listening to a lot of music lately with the same theme to it. No vocals, influenced by the punk and hardcore scenes of the late 80's and 90's, but not in the way you might think, (I find several members of these bands were into this music as youths but don't necesarily play that type of music, although if you are an aficionado you can notice the influence in their songs) and finally to borrow a description pioneered by the Pixie's, the term Loud soft Loud seems to fit.

This is post one of a four week series.

I present: You.May.Die.In.The.Desert

These guys are a three-piece plus sound effects from Seattle, WA. I really should have done this post when I first thought about it a month ago as they were on a west coast tour and just played Portland and Salt Lake City (where I was able to see them)

YMDITD is trance enducing to listen to. Their rhythms are complex and profound. They are also pure enegry on stage. They shift their instruments and contort their backs trying to relieve the fatigue caused by intricate repetitive strumming and picking.

Here is my favorite track from a new Split they just put out with the band I will profile next week. Over and out for now...Clark

04 Seagulls= Sea Eagles

Coldplay Videos

Hey all...I don't know how many Coldplay fans there are out there. Jenny and I saw them at the Sasquatch festival a few years back at the Gorge.

Anyways, not being the avid MTV junkie I used to be (and seeing as they don't play videos anyways), I was wondering if they had any new videos, and found a couple online I hadn't seen.

My favorite is "The Hardest Part". I've heard the song a million times, but the video puts a way different image in my head now! It's pretty funny, if you're not offended by 80 year old women dancing in provocative swim suits.

Enjoy!

Micromegas - New Song "Windfall"

Hey all, I'm in a band called Micromegas. We posted a new song on our website today (http://www.micromegasband.com/). I won't bog down the PRETENDO with it, but you can hear/download it on our site, or you can click on the picture above to download the song in zip file format.

It's called "Windfall", and it's about how really bad things can turn into really good things, given time and perspective.

We've got a couple other songs available for free download, all of which were finished in the last several months. We've also got our debut album streaming on our site. It's on sale on iTunes, Napster, or if you're old-school and want an actual CD, we still have a few left, so just let me know and I can send you one.

Hope you enjoy the songs, and thanks to Bart for setting up this cool new format where I can shamelessly plug my own music. I hope you all do the same.

The Unicorns (week 3 of O Canada month: a continuing series)

The other day Dave and I were discussing our “Desert Island 25,” namely, if we were marooned on a desert isle, the 25 CDs we could not live without. The only problem – both of our lists are over 50 CDs long. So to make a long story shorter, we were looking through Dave’s picks, striving to find CDs that just didn’t make the cut. As we neared the bottom of the list I was surprised to see the Unicorns on the list. “You like the Unicorns that much?” I queried. “Oh yeah,” he responded, “I listen to that CD at least once a week.”

After giving it some thought, I had to agree with him. The Unicorns would have to find a place on my Desert Island 25 (50) as well. I tend to forget the Unicorns amidst the swell of “next big things” crowding my iTunes – after all, they were a short-lived, relatively obscure band that only put out a CD (and a half) and an EP. But the truth of the matter is that if the Unicorns were to come out with their opus Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone? today, it would easily hold its place among The Vampire Weekend, The Dodos, and whatever Pitchfork declares to be the next big thing next week.

That’s no mean feat in a scene that seems to be picking up steam at an exponential rate. As Indie comes more and more to mean mainstream, as record companies desparatly look for the next group to buoy their sinking ship, the music scene today is more fickle than it's ever been (or at least it seems so to me). Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone? came out in 2003. Look at some of the other bands that came out with CDs in 2003 (or there about). The Postal Service? New new wave has come and gone. The Arcade Fire? Don’t get me wrong, I loves me some Arcade Fire, but all you have to do is hear the swelling bombast of “No Cars Go” over an NFL commercial, or hear them imitated by Phantom Planet to know that the Arcade Fire has achieved an iconic status, but they may be victims of their own success.

Part of the Unicorns staying power may be in their limited output and brief life-span, but it also has to do with their music. The Unicorns play pop. Pure and simple, un-pretentious pop, with catchy hooks and toe-tapping choruses. Not to say that their music is for everyone – any band that sings about ghosts and unicorns over the strangled warble of what sounds like a broken Casio probably isn’t going to get top 40 radio play. But to those of us that know and love the Unicorns, they’re a refreshing break from the heavy solemnity that pervades so much music these days.

The Unicorns were formed in December 2000, in Montreal, of course, by Nick Diamond, Alden Ginger and J’aime Tambeur (all stage names). Their first CD, the self-released Unicorns Are People Too, came out in March 2003. Having only made 500 copies of their debut, the Unicorns went back to the studio to record some new songs and rework some old ones, and released Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone? in November of 2003.

The album opens with perhaps the most sincere of their songs, “I Don’t Wanna Die,” in which Diamond tremulously recounts all the various ways in which he doesn’t want to go. The band quickly moves on to a trilogy of ghost songs. Although these songs are probably the catchiest on the CD, my personal favorites come later on, as the band loosens up and starts to spin out of control. “I Was Born (A Unicorn)” finds Diamond and Tambeur arguing back and forth about who writes the music. In “Tuff Luff” Diamond breaks out into a little hip-hop verse mid-song. “Inoculate the Innocuous” has one of my favorite intros of all time, but also some of the most head-scratching lyrics on the CD. “Somewhere in the asshole of my eye, there’s a muscle which relaxes when you cry,” Diamond breathes, sounding tired and worn-down, a far cry from the early energy of the Ghost trilogy and “Jellybones.” It’s almost relief when he declares “bananas help me unwind, watermelon makes it awesome” – I hope so, Nick, having an asshole in your eye sounds unpleasant. The album comes full circle on the short, tropical outro “Ready to Die.” “I’ve seen the world, kissed all the pretty girls, I’ve said my goodbyes and now I’m ready to die.” The Unicorns start the CD afraid of death, confront that fear via tales of ghosts and the sea, grow increasingly frenetic as the realization cements that death will come, and ultimately conclude that - you know what? - they’re ready.

That last song was prophetic. The band released the surprisingly mediocre EP The Unicorns: 2014 before imploding on tour. Their legacy lives on, however, in a fantastic CD and Diamond’s new band Islands, not to mention some great music videos. I don't know how to do the music-linky thing that Bart does, but I included a couple of videos that highlight the band's penchant for wearing pink.

I Was Born (A Unicorn)

Jellybones