I’ve been really getting into Reddit lately as an alternative to the usual suspect social media outlets. One of my favorite subreddits is The Overload, which describes itself as:
“A sub for unconventional club music. Ebm, noise, house, lo-fi music, techno, hardware jams, acid, chicago house, detroit techno Labels like L.I.E.S, Hessle Audio, Raster Noton, Token, Cititrax, Downwards, Ilian Tape, Detund, Crème Organization, Opal Tapes, Clone, Dance Mania, Lobster Theremin, Minimal Wave, Pinkman, The Trilogy Tapes, Dixon Avenue Basement Jams, Murder Capital, Perc Trax, Construct Re-Form, Mathematics, Mannequin, Killekill, Crimes of the Future, brokntoys, Tabernacle Records…”
I created a post which asked for recommendations for artists/labels similar to Huerco S (one of my favorite producers) and received a ton of wonderful responses from the community. I assembled the below Spotify playlist based on those recommendations.
It’s a deep rabbit hole. Bring your miner’s helmet.
With so much readily and freely available music at our collective disposal, the role of curator/mixer/DJ is paramount to discovery and a lean back listening experience. Secret Thirteen is beyond prolific at introducing new (to me) curators, producers, composers, and sonic artists.
Check out this mix from Bérangère Maximin, who “puts us on a cinematic trip of minimal, acousmatic, and concrete pieces merged with sound poetry and ambience.”
With music production software is now ubiquitous and available to anyone with a smartphone, tablet, and/or PC, some amazing esoteric sub-sub-sub-genres and online communities have emerged that deserve attention (i.e. vaporwave, aestheic, simpsonwave, club bathroom remixes, and lo-fi anything, etc.). As a producer, it’s all so very fascinating, especially given that my productions over the last decade have leaned in the lo-fi and appropriation directions, which is now in vogue.
While surfing the super cool site hearthis (the underground alternative to the uber commercialized and over cooked Soundcloud digital landfill), I luckily ran across lo-fi remixes of already lo-fi vintage blues recordings by a producer going by the alias of Vicksburg.Glacier.
These remixes and aesthetics resonate with me very strongly, so I’m paying it forward.
With the current plethora of streaming radio options and new live DJ set stations popping up (and down) on the web, it can be difficult to discern in which to invest precious ear time. It seems that Boiler Room has inspired myriad boilerplate copies of itself.
In 2018, Rádio Baixa appeared on the scene, from Coimbra, Portugal (one of the oldest university cities in Europe), with its own space and prolific and fresh programming of live DJ sets from Coimbra locals and Portugal nationals. The artistic and technical quality is optimal.
Rádio Baixa is a truly alternative bending of the aforementioned boilerplate. As an example, check out the unique melancholic and educated genre melange of Joana Oliveira’s frequent Heartcore sets (click play below).
Amoeba Music is one of the world’s coolest independent record stores, based in California. They’ve been posting their “What’s In My Bag” YouTube series for many years now, which Amoeba describes as “Our award-winning series featuring artists and tastemakers sharing what they found shopping at Amoeba.”
It’s educational and entertaining. And, thanks to “What’s In My Bag”, I’ve made some great music and artist discoveries from current hipsters and music legends.
Philadelphia-based Tulipomania is releasing their new maxi-single ‘Off the Map’, together with the remix of ‘On the Outside’ by London-based electronic producer Spinello. This three-track offering is being released via Sursumcorda Recordings just 10 months after their latest EP, which saw the band offer the original version of ‘On The Outside’, along with the Seahawks remix of ‘Don’t Be So Sure’.
On ‘Off the Map’, band members Tom Murray (lead vocals, bass, drums) and Cheryl Gelover (synthesizer, background vocals) were joined on guitar and glockenspiel) by Mitch Smith, who also contributed to the band’s eponymous first album. Recorded and mastered by Richard Hartline, the final mix was produced by Mark Plati, famed for his work with such artists as The Cure, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Philip Glass crafted the final mix, in addition to producing, recording, mixing or performing on most of Bowie’s musical output from 1996 to 2003.
To date, Tulipomania have released four albums, as well as numerous singles. Their music is built on conflict and contrast, internal battles between hazy dream-pop and angular indie, between fractious and shattered vocals and muscular beats, swirling psychedelia and sonorous, drifting keyboard washes, between sinister atmospherics and raw guitars.
Tulipomania’s music has variously been referred to as ‘cult synth punks’, ‘glam-leaning’, ‘art-rock’ and ‘muscular chamber pop’, while many reviewers are quick to reference the affinity with early 4AD Records’ output, an association that is underlined by the fact that the duo have utilized legendary 4AD graphic designer Vaughan Oliver for album packaging.
‘Off The Map’ is a trance-like dark moody affair with bluesy elements, with Murray’s smoky deep tenor sparingly backed by Gelover’s vocals. ‘On the Outside (Spinello Remix)’ is a more upbeat offering and is dramatic, dark and dubby. It was created by Spinello (a.k.a. Shane Woolman), a London-based producer and remixer, who also hosts shows on NTS Radio, Resonance FM and New New World, in addition to working at The Wire magazine and DJing as part of The Wire Soundsystem.
A rather art-conscious duo, Tulipomania round out their already notable collection of notable videos by presenting not one, but two, new animated music videos to accompany this release. The animation was created by band members Cheryl Gelover and Tom Murray. This resolute juncture between music and visual art has always made Tulipomania videos stand out among their peers.
The collage-animation process for the ‘Off The Map’ video was quite intensive, with Murray and Gelover alternating fragmented self-portraits with imagery they pieced together, frame by frame, from thousands of individual sheets of paper. These fragmented self-portraits alternate with imagery torn and pieced together, matching the contradictory mood of the lyrics. The result is a stunning visual that reinforces the contradictory nature of the song’s lyrics.
Similarly, the video for ‘On the Outside (Spinello Remix)’ features vintage objects animated frame by frame as torn paper and tape collages on sheets of black paper. Loaded with a quaint naiveté, this animation was inspired by the inclusion of a space-age era broadcast layered into the Spinello Remix.
This video for ‘Off the Map’ has been chosen as an Official Selection at the BAFTA qualifying Aesthetica Short Film Festival in York, UK. Described as “artistic and inventive” and “gorgeous”, the music videos created by Tulipomania have been featured in many other film festivals worldwide, including the London Short Film Festival (England), Leeds International Film Festival (England), Aesthetica Short Film Festival (York, England), Encounters (Bristol, England), Zubroffka (Poland), StopTrik (Croatia, Poland), Brooklyn Film Festival (USA), and Animation Block Party (USA).
Off the Map
CREDITS
Tom Murray (lead vocals, drums, bass, guitar-organ)
Cheryl Gelover (background vocals, synthesizer)
Mitch Smith (guitar, glockenspiel)
Richard Hartline (production, engineering and mastering)
Mark Plati, (mix)
On the Outside [Spinello remix]
CREDITS
Tom Murray (lead vocals, drums, bass, guitar-organ)
Cheryl Gelover (background vocals, synthesizer)
Spinello (remix)
Tulipomania’s fantastic animated music video “Who Let You Know?” is included in several international film festivals in November and December of 2017. Details below.
December 6-10-2017 / Białystok, Poland
Official Selection 2017 Competition: Music Video
Tulipomania: Who Let You Know? Radiohead: I Promise
Bonobo: No Reason (ft. Nick Murphy)
Son Lux: Cage of Bones
Los Viejos: Amnesia en el Estado
Mark Lotterman: Happy
Pablopavo: Ostatni dzień sierpnia
Husky: Ghost
The Blaze: Territory
Music Video Award Competition November 1-16-2017 / Leeds • UK
The selection of music videos in competition are:
Who Let You Know? – Tulipomania Kon-Tiki – Ultrasound
The Was – The Avalanches
No Reason – Bonobo
Burning Star – Their Names
Carlow Town – Seamus Fogarty
Dust My Shoulders Off – Jane Zhang
Fade – Chloé Bird
Fires – Natasha James
Growing Young – Oly
Henry McCullough – BP Fallons
Home – Jesuton
Lead Me To You – Tom Rosenthal
Light At The End of the Tunnel – Bel Heir
Mermaids – Floyd Shakim
Mountains – mac/glidden
Nostalgic Love – Bergfilm
Piece of Gold – Lewis & Leigh
Stardust – Next Is Best
Trains – Poppy Ackroyd
Tulipomania – Who Let You Know? James – Dear John
U.N.K.L.E. – The Road
Addison Groove – Changa
Anvil
Black Bird
Jil – All Your Words
KEØMA – Gone
Kool Keith X MF Doom – Super Hero
Looper – Farfisa Song (introducing Mustard & Ketchup)
Mark Pritchard – Give It Your Choir
MaxFuture – Till You Let Go Metaxas – Sirens
Pooma – Soldier
Sean Hayes – Boom Boom Baby
Sevdaliza – Human
Siyyu – Stop Us
Stellar – Laura Hoejberg Kunov
The Last Skeptik – Splinters
Tropical Mannshaft – Love Operator
Ultrasound – Kon-Tiki
Xiu Long
Yul – Minigme UK
Check out tulipomania.com for more info about the band and recent activity.
“Tulipomania’s unique take on post-punk boasts gritty guitars underpinned by a brooding rhythm section to provide a backdrop for compelling and atmospheric vocals” – Louder Than War
“Combining melancholic, swirling synths with delicate and vulnerable vocals, the track pulls at the listener with an insistent and consistent forlorn majesty that is a common feature on their most recent album This Gilded Age” – Overblown Magazine
“Tom Murray’s haunted, high-pitched vocals – resembling a panting phantom on a respirator – are still front and center, with his circuitous drum patterns and springy basslines weaving around his writhing words like spider webs. Similarly, Cheryl Gelover’s sinister, steadfast keyboard swells threaten and torment, while Mitch Smith’s gripping guitars are alternately scratchy, submerged, and shimmering” –Big Takeover Magazine
“Filled with emotional torment… a sound so ornately and distinctly different” – Indie Band Guru
“Avant Garde touches… Channels a highly effective leftfield calling that is more on a par with Talking Heads than the more obvious comparison to Portishead… Rich psychedelic gaze” – U&I Magazine
Philadelphia-based Tulipomania has announced they will release a new single, which includes three tracks. The first single from this collection is the Seahawks Remix of ‘Don’t Be So Sure’.
Seahawks is a duo made up of Jon Tye, founder of the legendary Lo Recordings (whose roster includes Grimes, Aphex Twin, Four Tet, Thurston Moore and Astronauts) and Pete Fowler, creator of Monsterism vinyl toys and perhaps most famed as illustrator of oh so many Super Furry Animals album sleeves. The duo are self-described purveyors of “psychedelic yacht rock, deck shoegaze, hazy beach pop vibrations, and marina drone”.
The original version of ‘Don’t Be So Sure’ featured on the band’s fourth album ‘This Gilded Age’ (2016), described by Byron Coley of WIRE Magazine (May 2017 edition) as “…pretty whacked – something akin to a battle of the bands between Crazy Horse and The Kronos Quartet”.
Tulipomania, whose name was inspired by the 1637 Dutch tulip market collapse, has been categorized as ‘cult synth punks’, ‘glam-leaning’, ‘postpunk’, ‘art rock’, and ‘muscular chamber pop’. Band members Tom Murray (lead vocals, bass, drums, guitar-organ) and Cheryl Gelover(synthesizer, background vocals) were joined by Mitch Smith (guitar, glockenspiel), who also contributed to the band’s eponymous first album, Richard Hartline (piano, percussion, engineering and mastering), and Howard Thompson (executive producer).
This release features intriguing new artwork by legendary artist Vaughan Oliver, whose work they have long admired. Oliver give distinct visual identities for 4AD releases by many bands, including Mojave 3, Lush, Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance, The Breeders, This Mortal Coil, Pale Saints, Pixies, and Throwing Muses, in addition to numerous non-4AD artists such as David Sylvian.
This release will also be accompanied by two new music videos, animated by Tulipomania themselves. The band’s meticulous, mesmerizing videos augment the group’s artistry, involving painstaking frame-by-frame stop-motion animation techniques.
Gelover and Murray first met in Art school, and found themselves collaborating on projects for their Experimental Film and Animation classes. Tulipomania essentially grew along with these experiences. They were influenced by Talk Talk, the solo work by Mark Hollis and Tim Friese-Greene, and many early 4AD bands, including Cocteau Twins, Lush, Throwing Muses, and The Pixies.
Described as “artistic and inventive”, the music videos created by Tulipomania have been featured in film festivals worldwide, the most recent of which include the London Short Film Festival (England), Leeds International Film Festival (England), Aesthetica Short Film Festival (York, England), Encounters (Bristol, England), Zubroffka (Poland), and StopTrik (Croatia, Poland).
‘Don’t Be So Sure’ was the band’s first hand-painted animation, featuring multiple passes of brushwork shot on thousands of individual sheets of black paper, thereby allowing singing self-portraits to morph and dissolve in an atmospheric exploration of ambiguity. For the video made for the Seahawks Remix, the band re-photographed the original artwork, frame by frame, matching the new tempo and softer mood, which they felt also called for a more painterly, layered approach to the imagery.
