WHY?
ADVENTURE TIME, dj sodapop, Serengeti
Tue, August 28, 2012
Doors: 8:00 pm / Show: 8:00 pm
The Echoplex
Los Angeles, CA
This event is all ages
http://www.theecho.com/event/137687/
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WHY?
WHY? is a trio of handsome Cincinnati-born men who fiddle with skins, strings, bells and microphones and present their findings to the listening public. Singer Yoni Wolf grew up the second son to an art book editor and a rabbi. He got his start recording bad poems and sloppy beats on the family synagogue's 4-track. In junior high he discovered hip-hop. At art school, he learned how to drop out. Yoni's brother Josiah played drums at Rabbi Wolf's worship service as a kid, became a band geek as a teen, and fell in love with Thelonious Monk on his way to study music at University of Cincinnati. Doug McDiarmid would eventually get expelled from that same school for carrying a stun gun, but first he was raised by two French teachers and taught piano while in kindergarten. He also went to high school with the Wolfs, where he played in Steve Miller cover bands.
In various permutations together and with other now-notables (i.e. Doseone, Odd Nosdam, Mr. Dibbs, Atmosphere's Slug), these three created and/or contributed to several freewheeling rap and lo-fi rock-related projects including Greenthink, Miss Ohio's Nameless, Reaching Quiet, and the seminal cLOUDDEAD outfit. Their wildest dreams were achieved when they relocated to Oakland to make pop-inflected psychedelic folk-hop.
For four years, two EPs and 2003's cult classic LP, Oaklandazulasylum, WHY? comprised Yoni Wolf alone. He honed his trademark delivery – a sickly sweet, half-rapped, singsong style – shined up his wry, picturesque poetry, and developed a clip-and-collage aesthetic using keyboards, toys, guitars, samplers and anything worth banging on. When Doug and Josiah moved west to join Yoni, they brought with them a hoard of instruments and the ability to wail on every last one. By chops and imagination, WHY? grew into a thing of flesh, bones and fully fledged songs, resulting in 2005's Elephant Eyelash album. Critics swooned; ladies lauded; WHY? neither resisted nor rested. They toured – with Silver Jews, Yo La Tengo, and Islands. They collaborated – with Danielson Family, Department Of Eagles, and Subtle (Yoni also recorded with Fog's Andrew Broder as "Hymie's Basement"). They put out yet more
music.
The brand new album Eskimo Snow is something of a companion piece to last year's celebrated Alopecia LP. In February of 2007, the WHY? trio temporarily relocated to Minneapolis and officially inducted Fog players Andrew Broder and Mark Erickson. Recording live as a five-piece, WHY? created two distinct albums from those sessions:
Alopecia, with its taut rhythms and biting wit, and Eskimo Snow, a shadowy and sprawling set that finds Yoni resigned to and ever-awed by those infinite erring bits of existence that make WHY? what it is.
In various permutations together and with other now-notables (i.e. Doseone, Odd Nosdam, Mr. Dibbs, Atmosphere's Slug), these three created and/or contributed to several freewheeling rap and lo-fi rock-related projects including Greenthink, Miss Ohio's Nameless, Reaching Quiet, and the seminal cLOUDDEAD outfit. Their wildest dreams were achieved when they relocated to Oakland to make pop-inflected psychedelic folk-hop.
For four years, two EPs and 2003's cult classic LP, Oaklandazulasylum, WHY? comprised Yoni Wolf alone. He honed his trademark delivery – a sickly sweet, half-rapped, singsong style – shined up his wry, picturesque poetry, and developed a clip-and-collage aesthetic using keyboards, toys, guitars, samplers and anything worth banging on. When Doug and Josiah moved west to join Yoni, they brought with them a hoard of instruments and the ability to wail on every last one. By chops and imagination, WHY? grew into a thing of flesh, bones and fully fledged songs, resulting in 2005's Elephant Eyelash album. Critics swooned; ladies lauded; WHY? neither resisted nor rested. They toured – with Silver Jews, Yo La Tengo, and Islands. They collaborated – with Danielson Family, Department Of Eagles, and Subtle (Yoni also recorded with Fog's Andrew Broder as "Hymie's Basement"). They put out yet more
music.
The brand new album Eskimo Snow is something of a companion piece to last year's celebrated Alopecia LP. In February of 2007, the WHY? trio temporarily relocated to Minneapolis and officially inducted Fog players Andrew Broder and Mark Erickson. Recording live as a five-piece, WHY? created two distinct albums from those sessions:
Alopecia, with its taut rhythms and biting wit, and Eskimo Snow, a shadowy and sprawling set that finds Yoni resigned to and ever-awed by those infinite erring bits of existence that make WHY? what it is.
ADVENTURE TIME
Adventure Time is (was? pretty sure "was" is more appropo) Frosty and Daedelus; I'm not sure what Frosty was up to, but Dae turned out to be a total beat strangler, releasing record after record packed with sampledelic instrumental bliss-bliss. My fave is Of Snowdonia (will somebody put that out on vinyl, please GOD!?!?) …
Back to Adventure Time: They put out, that I know of, one spectacular album called Dreams of Water Themes, two 7-inches that are likely hard to find (guess it's time to do some Gumshoe-in') and the "Glass Bottom Boat" 12-inch, which I was thrilled to encounter — and subsequently cozy up to — in Austin recently.
This five-cut mini-LP offers a glimpse of the glee of Water Themes but not the mind-empowering OOF! Plus there's a guest spot from Ellay Khule that hasn't aged well; not well at all. (Remember when indie-rap was all the rage and a ton of boring couplet-tossers like Living Legends and Jurassic 5 were everywhere? That's what "Whetting Whistles with Pigeon John" reminds me of with its bravadocious beat and bodacious low end. Not what I came to the Adventure Time party to hear … )
Much like Antipop Consortium records, with "Glass Bottom Boats" you have to skim the surface a bit for the creamiest bits, like beef from tallow (or something; not much of a tallow enthusiast). I just mentioned how there was a glut of standard-ass indie-rap, right? Well there also was a glut of instrumental hip-hop bands back then (2003-2005), and luckily it was of higher cloth, outfits like Alias, Blockhead, personal fave Odd Nosdam, Nobody, Deceptikon (which was a pretty rad group), RJD2 — don't try to tell me he's an "electronic" musician; I don't buy it — setting a standard that proved to be tough to follow (though I guess you could say Flying Lotus did a good job of futurizing it, along with Daedelus and a select-few others).
I can only imagine what Adventure Time might have accomplished had they kept at it. They took gloomy jazz samples and put them in a context that not only rebooted my sense of what good music could be at the time, but extended the root works into better environs than they originally existed in. It was fascinating, and the cover art to their albums — watery, squishy, eternally aqua-blue, cartoonish, etc. — is a perfect example of the Album As Art ethos in full effect. None of Daedelus' subsequent records look this good, playa!
Only on Side B does the Adventure Time duo set things right. Quick-skippin' "Crazy, Crazy Like a Fox" is vintage AT (though it is in fact a remix of a Shakeyface song), setting a head-nodding tempo from the giggety get-go and dosing the listening with a kaleidescopic array of sax flutters and doubled-up xylophone sprinkles (at least I hope they're double-tracked).
"Basil Bossy Never" is one of the brand new tracks on here and it's middling yet intriguing with its Cuban piano overtones and stuttering drums. Daedelus leaned heavliy on this track for one of the cuts from Snowdonia, that's fo' sho'. Another disappointment, WHAT'LL I DO? WHAT'LL I DOOOOO?
"Whetting Whistles" (Nobody remix) is another curious mix, teeming with elements that just don't interest the ear and more of those big-city bass lines that don't match up with my high expectations for Adventure Time, even if it is a Nobody remix.
Back to Adventure Time: They put out, that I know of, one spectacular album called Dreams of Water Themes, two 7-inches that are likely hard to find (guess it's time to do some Gumshoe-in') and the "Glass Bottom Boat" 12-inch, which I was thrilled to encounter — and subsequently cozy up to — in Austin recently.
This five-cut mini-LP offers a glimpse of the glee of Water Themes but not the mind-empowering OOF! Plus there's a guest spot from Ellay Khule that hasn't aged well; not well at all. (Remember when indie-rap was all the rage and a ton of boring couplet-tossers like Living Legends and Jurassic 5 were everywhere? That's what "Whetting Whistles with Pigeon John" reminds me of with its bravadocious beat and bodacious low end. Not what I came to the Adventure Time party to hear … )
Much like Antipop Consortium records, with "Glass Bottom Boats" you have to skim the surface a bit for the creamiest bits, like beef from tallow (or something; not much of a tallow enthusiast). I just mentioned how there was a glut of standard-ass indie-rap, right? Well there also was a glut of instrumental hip-hop bands back then (2003-2005), and luckily it was of higher cloth, outfits like Alias, Blockhead, personal fave Odd Nosdam, Nobody, Deceptikon (which was a pretty rad group), RJD2 — don't try to tell me he's an "electronic" musician; I don't buy it — setting a standard that proved to be tough to follow (though I guess you could say Flying Lotus did a good job of futurizing it, along with Daedelus and a select-few others).
I can only imagine what Adventure Time might have accomplished had they kept at it. They took gloomy jazz samples and put them in a context that not only rebooted my sense of what good music could be at the time, but extended the root works into better environs than they originally existed in. It was fascinating, and the cover art to their albums — watery, squishy, eternally aqua-blue, cartoonish, etc. — is a perfect example of the Album As Art ethos in full effect. None of Daedelus' subsequent records look this good, playa!
Only on Side B does the Adventure Time duo set things right. Quick-skippin' "Crazy, Crazy Like a Fox" is vintage AT (though it is in fact a remix of a Shakeyface song), setting a head-nodding tempo from the giggety get-go and dosing the listening with a kaleidescopic array of sax flutters and doubled-up xylophone sprinkles (at least I hope they're double-tracked).
"Basil Bossy Never" is one of the brand new tracks on here and it's middling yet intriguing with its Cuban piano overtones and stuttering drums. Daedelus leaned heavliy on this track for one of the cuts from Snowdonia, that's fo' sho'. Another disappointment, WHAT'LL I DO? WHAT'LL I DOOOOO?
"Whetting Whistles" (Nobody remix) is another curious mix, teeming with elements that just don't interest the ear and more of those big-city bass lines that don't match up with my high expectations for Adventure Time, even if it is a Nobody remix.
dj sodapop
When Shaun Koplow moved to the Bay Area to study art at UC Berkeley in 2001, he had no idea he'd wind up running his favorite record label, or that he'd eventually relocate its operations to Los Angeles, the city from whence he came. Four years ago, at the age of 23, Koplow became Anticon Records' label manager the chief wheel-greaser charged with vetting new talent, developing established acts, conceiving record campaigns and handling the day-to-day. Having come up amongst a crew of West L.A. backpacker kids, Koplow was a longtime devotee of California's outsider rap scene, a movement that saw Anticon at its forefront in the late '90s. He's since made it his mission to preserve that commitment to innovation, artistic license and all-around quality while pushing the label's genre-bending tendencies yet further, helping to bring artists like Baths, Tobacco, Son Lux, Bike For Three!, and Anathallo into the fold alongside Anticon mainstays like WHY?, Themselves, Odd Nosdam and Dosh. Koplow views his role at the label as curatorial, a philosophy that can be witnessed literally when he's DJing under the handle Sodapop, or co-hosting Silver Lake's weekly Calling All Kids night with partner Matthewdavid (Dublab, Alpha Pup, Leaving Records). The pair's duties for C.A.K. are head-to-toe they're promoters, organizers, song-selectors, and even bartenders and Koplow's vinyl/Serato sets consistently display an ear for the adventurous: favoring vintage krautrock, contemporary electronic pop and Bay Area rap. C.A.K.'s history of guests is equally diverse: Nite Jewel, Dm-Funk, Lucky Dragons, Flying Lotus, and Ariel Pink, to name a few. Both Koplow and Anticon have been based in L.A. since early 2008. The former creates visual art occasionally and nurses a strong fetish for rare wax, brims and kicks. The latter refuses to be pigeonholed, eternally.
Serengeti
If the voices on Serengeti's songs often sound like they don't belong to a rapper, that's the idea. More than any MC working, Serengeti (born David Cohn) writes story songs, in which he assumes the identities of the characters he creates. Sometimes these characters recur — like Kenny, the middle-aged sports enthusiast and rabid Brian Dennehy fan, whom Serengeti dreamed up on his 2006 album, Dennehy.
On the new Family & Friends, however, almost every song introduces a new character. Serengeti's voice doesn't vary as dramatically on this album as it did on Dennehy, save for the prissy affect of the self-reinventing fool who narrates "California." But his normal delivery has its own quirks: It can be discursive and mumbly or clear and quick, as in "The Whip," which chronicles the life of a mixed martial arts fighter.
Serengeti's "Family and Friends" juxtaposes a humble but idyllic vision of family with a haunting chorus.
Song Of The Day
Serengeti: On Fantasy And 'Family' Matters
Serengeti has more talent than success, as well as more than a dozen albums to his name. Several of these are quite obscure, and most are typical underground hip-hop — more complex and drawn-out than Family & Friends, which squeezes 11 songs into just 31 minutes. The new album's title is thematic: Just about every song here concerns intimate personal relationships. Half excavate ruined marriages, and the most troubling, "Long Ears," describes the return of an absentee dad.
There's an accrued melancholy about Family & Friends that reflects both the economic downturn and the long slog of a marginal artist who's just turned 35. It's poignant that way. But one reason it's poignant is that it also has its silly side. - NPR
On the new Family & Friends, however, almost every song introduces a new character. Serengeti's voice doesn't vary as dramatically on this album as it did on Dennehy, save for the prissy affect of the self-reinventing fool who narrates "California." But his normal delivery has its own quirks: It can be discursive and mumbly or clear and quick, as in "The Whip," which chronicles the life of a mixed martial arts fighter.
Serengeti's "Family and Friends" juxtaposes a humble but idyllic vision of family with a haunting chorus.
Song Of The Day
Serengeti: On Fantasy And 'Family' Matters
Serengeti has more talent than success, as well as more than a dozen albums to his name. Several of these are quite obscure, and most are typical underground hip-hop — more complex and drawn-out than Family & Friends, which squeezes 11 songs into just 31 minutes. The new album's title is thematic: Just about every song here concerns intimate personal relationships. Half excavate ruined marriages, and the most troubling, "Long Ears," describes the return of an absentee dad.
There's an accrued melancholy about Family & Friends that reflects both the economic downturn and the long slog of a marginal artist who's just turned 35. It's poignant that way. But one reason it's poignant is that it also has its silly side. - NPR
Venue Information:
The Echoplex
1822 W. Sunset Blvd
The Echoplex is located below The Echo, enter through the alley at 1154 Glendale Blvd
Los Angeles, CA, 90026
The Echoplex
1822 W. Sunset Blvd
The Echoplex is located below The Echo, enter through the alley at 1154 Glendale Blvd
Los Angeles, CA, 90026
