Curtis Lane is the first substantial release from Active Child’s Pat Grossi, a choirboy-turned indie pop musician who’s making some of the most beautiful music coming out of L.A. right now. “I’m in Your Church at Night” is a stunning opener with soaring echoing vocals that readily suggest the collapsing church in Perugia, Italy, that apparently inspired the song.

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This EP’s song styles and track order feel classical in form, ala Homer and Virgil, but trade bombast for the correct balance of grit and sheen. With Donovan (Drums) and Kate (Bass) supplying solid, pulsating grooves for Tim and Mateo to splatter colors of guitar tone over, Cobalt Cranes earn themselves a place in the garage pantheon. Listen. Love.

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While it’s arguable whether the band is truly trying to emulate the Raveonettes or if they just sounded similar out of coincidence, it’s clear that they have many of the same influences as the aforementioned band—Jesus and Mary Chain, Spacemen 3, Velvet Underground—and have came up with very close to the same result.

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The name Antique Imp conjures up an image of an aging elven creature regaling younglings with tales of times gone by, and this name actually applies to the music—this is a band that carefully thumbs its way through the crate of your most beloved albums and helps you see them as a cohesive whole. Antique Imp explains their own take on your R.E.M. and My Bloody Valentine LPs, telling stories about when they first bought their copy of Eno’s Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy and describing exactly why Syd Barrett is so influential.

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matt wignall Download: Free Moral Agents “Tradere” (Live at {open} in Long Beach) [Audio clip: view full post to listen] Download: Free Moral Agents “Aravand” (Live at the Prospector in Long Beach) [Audio clip: view full post to listen] (from the Control This! EP coming soon on Chocolate Industries) Two live recordings from Long Beach’s [...]

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On Le Switch’s latest 3-song EP, The Devil Needs a Cough Drop, singer Aaron Kyle sounds like he could use one as well. Kyle sings with an extreme urgency—a vocal style that falls somewhere between Memphis soul and death metal. It’s a voice that can overwhelm a recording, but Le Switch has a tightness and a confidence that you would expect from a band that has been one of the best and most prolific live acts in the Silverlake scene.

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I don’t know if Bobb Bruno realizes it, but he’s the Bizarro-World Kim Fowley—an unwitting svengali who’s produced girl bands and wrote or played songs on countless other bands’ albums, but whose utter lack of self-promotion almost hints that he secretly is horrified of his own project Making It Big.

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dan monick

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