Lemon Sun has a had a good week.

The songs “Same Old Ground” and “Congratulate Our Thievery” have been chosen as INTERNATIONAL SONGWRITING COMPETITION finalists out of over 15,000 entries.

Here’s a reason why it was good to shell out the entry fee and get these judges listening:
Tom Waits, James Mercer (The Shins), Robert Smith, Jerry Lee Lewis, Kings of Leon, James Cotton, Sandra Bernhard, Black Francis (The Pixies), Loretta Lynn, Steve Winwood, Jeff Beck, Weird Al Yankovic, John Mayall, Robbie Williams, and many others along with heads of labels and A&R.

You can vote for the ISC PEOPLE’S VOICE award here.

The band is also giving away a cover of The Cure’s “Jumping Someone Else’s Train” for free.

Click here to watch the trailer for Return Of The Rub-A-Dub Style!

Dub Club is an L.A. institution and now (after almost five years of filming) the documentary Return Of The Rub-A-Dub Style—which follows both the organizers of Dub Club and the long line of original reggae and dub stars they’ve brought to perform exclusive shows in L.A.—is about to release. Director Steve Henft (who has made videos for Primal Scream, Stone Roses, the Cure and more) and Dub Club mainstay Tom Chasteen speak before a special screening at tonight’s Dub Club. This interview by Nolan Knight.

What was the first record that hooked you into reggae and dub music?
Tom Chasteen (producer/Dub Club selector): The first thing that got me into reggae music was actually my parents. They went to Jamaica in the early seventies and brought back a bunch of records. They had the Harder They Come soundtrack and the Toots and the Maytals’ Funky Kingston album. Those were the first records to get me into reggae. The thing that got me into dub would probably be the Scientist albums. I bought those when I was a teenager—like Scientist Wins the World Cup, Scientist Versus the Space Invaders, a couple of those albums. That’s what really sold me on dub—listening to those. The word dub has a couple of different meanings. I guess the most frequent meaning of dub is—the Jamaican style—they’d make a 45, and on the A-side you’d have the vocal version of the song and on the B-side you’d have an instrumental of the same song but they would add a lot of effects to it—cutting the vocals in and out, making this psychedelic mix of it and that would be the ‘dub.’ That’s kind of the most concise explanation. Then rub-a-dub doesn’t have the same exact meaning. Rub-a-dub is more of this fixed style of Jamaican music that’s kind of in the era of the late sixties through the seventies into the mid-eighties. A slow and heavy kind of reggae that was really great for playing on these big outdoor sound systems and people toasting over.
The Dub Club has generated a huge response over the years—did it start off big or was it a gradual process?
TC: No, it started off pretty small. We have been doing it since 2000. It took a while to build. I would say the last five or six years it’s been a pretty big crowd—solid each week. It’s been a good crowd consistently for years and years. It took a while because I think there weren’t many other people doing this style of music. But we gradually found more and more people and then built from that following—people who liked the style of music and what we do. I think they appreciate that we bring in artists that are rarely seen or who haven’t been here before.
How did the documentary begin?
Steve Hanft (director): We started documenting the shows and then we realized that the Sound System shows in particular could be made into a film. We got excited about that but for me it was a new thing—even though it’s an old style of music that started in the sixties. For me, it was like, ‘Wow, people are rapping over beats back then?’ Basically, I was just excited about finding out about it. I think the first show we filmed was in 2004. We were shooting the rest of them up to a few months ago.
Were all the artists in the film readily available? Or did you have to go hunt some of them down in Jamaica?
SH: We definitely had to hunt those artists down for sure. Those guys at Dub Club—the selectors who book all the shows—they are digging so deep into the roots of reggae—getting the records, getting the artists. A lot of them came through one artist in particular—Tippa Lee, who’s actually a producer on the movie. He knows a lot of them. Tom would ask for some super old school artists and Tippa would know how to find them.
TC: In my experience, usually the artists were good to work with cause they really want to play and they are excited to come here and perform. A lot of these artists are great artists but they mainly play in Europe and they don’t play here very much. They still sound great. Usually they are just great to work with because they are excited that people still love their music. They’re excited that there is a young crowd here that knows their records.
SH: We really wanted an interview with Brigadier Jerry but he’s a real intense person. He was gonna do it and we went to the Twelve Tribes Church in Mount Washington—the Jamaican church were he is one of the founding members. And then he said, ‘No.’ [Laughs]
Can you tell us a little about the film’s soundtrack and where we can pick up a copy?
TC: It’s gonna come out in August and the DVD with the soundtrack will all be in one package together. A lot of the artists in the movie are on it but then there are others like Prince Jazzbo and Jimmy Riley—plus a lot of other great singers. We tracked the music here in L.A. but a lot of the vocals were recorded in Jamaica. It’s kind of just the tip of the iceberg. We have a lot of tracks that we’ve done over the years and they’re going to be out on Echodelic, which is our label. It’s kind of following the traditional Jamaican style where we have the Sound System—Echodelic Sound System—and Sound System kind of becomes the label, putting out its own records.
SH: [The DVD is] gonna come out right around the time of the screening. We’re in the process of building the DVD. The editing is done but we’re putting a lot of extras into it.
You was saying that the film will also be screened on the 15th—what does the club have in store for that night?
TC: We’re gonna screen the film at nine o’clock at the Echoplex and it will be free to come see the movie—free before nine-thirty. Then later that night we have a performance with Trinity, a classic seventies Jamaican DJ. We’re flying him in from Jamaica for that show. So we booked a performance with Trinity and Tippa Lee—and probably some other special guests will come out too.

RETURN OF THE RUB-A-DUB STYLE SCREENS WED., JULY 15, WITH TRINITY AND TIPPA LEE AT DUB CLUB AT THE ECHOPLEX, 1154 GLENDALE BLVD., ECHO PARK. SCREENING AT 9 PM / FREE BEFORE 9:30 PM / $10 AFTER / 21+. ATTHEECHO.COM. RETURN OF THE RUB-A-DUB STYLE DVD AND SOUNDTRACK WILL RELEASE THIS SUMMER ON ECHODELIC SOUND. MORE INFORMATION AT MYSPACE.COM/DUBCLUBLA.

“Tail & Mane,” which is the first song on Cryptasize’s album Mythomania, rules because it has the upbeat, romantic, melody of Four Seasons and the soft haziness of Carpenters but translated through a survivor of ’90s girl fronted rock. Anything that has the Carpenters in it is ok! by me. Lots of Carpenters here. Cryptacize carpenterizes so good. Note: Crypt’s Nedelle and Chris are a couple rather than siblings, and there’s more people in the band…

As the songs progressed during the band’s set, thoughts transcend Beach Boys, and visit Beachhouse sans echo trails, stare at the sea with the Cure, climb through a popping bass strolling Superfly, and suddenly a cowboy appears, faintly. I can only hope that Cryptacize’s moving to L.A. this summer will entice that cowpoke apparition hiding behind the endless summer beach party to hang out for a clambake. This band will fit right in. The crowd packed belly to back at Echo Curio certainly gave the impression of an impending warm welcome.

—Daiana Feuer

Download: Gangi “Commonplace Feathers”

(from A coming out in May on vinyl from White Noise)

Gangi will be playing their final residency at Spaceland tonight so we are lifting this interview out of our archives. The vinyl version of their album A is almost out and they are already working on the follow-up Gun Show, with a title track that sounds like T. Rex and Funkadelic put together. They speak here months before when issues of toxic mold were much more on their minds. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

Is your new attic in Glendale healthier than your old bedroom in Williamsburg?
Matt Gangi (guitar/vocals/samples/drums): Definitely. I don’t know if it influenced the record, but there was black mold and mushrooms growing out of the wall—bigger than the size of my hand. And growing out of the ceiling. The place was rent-stabilized and the landlord didn’t care because I was just like a noisy kid paying cheap rent.
He didn’t care if you lived or died?
M: It was pretty terrible. They cut open the ceiling and this green and brown stuff was dripping all over my stuff. My neighbor came down and said, ‘That shouldn’t be exposed! I built your walls out in the ‘60s and that’s asbestos!’
Lyle Nesse (drums/keys/samples/vocals): Matt always called me thinking he was dying—that’s just his personality.
M: I’m a hypochondriac in general.
L: That’s an understatement! But I went up there and there actually were huge fungi and mushrooms growing out of the wall.
M: Completely non-edible.
Did you try?
M: We don’t go that far out, man! People in the building got really sick. In Williamsburg, people were getting all these cancers—sarcomas. Someone got cancer in my building, and the person who lived above me got nose infections from the toxic mold. And he got an autoimmune disease akin to lupus and had to take HIV medication. I was finally like, ‘Hey, man, the album’s done—let’s get on the road!’
When you came to L.A., were you like, ‘Ah, smell that fresh air?’
M: Exactly. Better that than aspergillus.
What are your favorite two songs to DJ together?
L: When we DJ out, Matt and I are pretty much switching every song. I usually bring hip-hop, Afrobeat, some gamelan music—so beat-heavy music and hip-hop and then Matt playing a lot of psych and reissues. So that idea of bringing together all of that and people who listen to all that music, and the people who listen to only that music exclusively.
Have you been to Low End Theory?
M: We’re really into Low End Theory. We were there just the other day to see Gaslamp Killer. He’s amazing. Crystal Antlers played a couple weeks ago. It’s really exciting when these communities come together. There shouldn’t be a separation between those scenes, and there’s not.
What is an information bomb and how do we live in it?
M: We decided before not to burden you with this kind of an interview.
Really?
M: ‘What if we just took it really conceptually and answered by putting every interview question into Google searches?’ Why even answer an interview about ourselves when you can type in a question and get so many voices and experiences? That’s more interesting than anything we could say.
What is interesting then?
M: What’s interesting is what would survive. Lyle comes from a hip-hop background—so it’s which samples survive—which ones are interesting and relevant. What’s interesting about an information bomb in general is the back catalog of information. A catchy little phrase or word combination in the future might be really interesting to people in a way it isn’t now. We played at Little Radio and the sound guy was talking about John Titor. It’s just kind of silly but an interesting idea. That a blog from the past could foretell the future. That’s kind of why I’m into all the reissues coming out now. I’ve really been digging on like Brazilian recordings that made it out when all the psych recordings had been destroyed by the government for being subversive. That Marconi Notaro record.
L: To me what’s interesting is what part is preserved and what ends up in a basement somewhere. From a sampling and beatmaking background—it’s the more obscure things that you as a producer can blow off and bring into the light.
Like the Skull Snaps.
L: Just bringing it back into circulation. Like in psych and folk with all the reissues coming out. It’s so confusing to me that appropriation is looked down upon in some circles. It’s so important to culture to bring things back out.
M: The act of appropriating in general is a political act because of all the things it brings up. Every phrase is like trademarked now—the Situationists had that line ‘revolutionize your everyday life’ and now that’s how products are being sold.
L: You just made me think of the book I’m reading now—by an author Matt’s been corresponding with. Sebastien Doubinsky. For his first draft of his new book Potemkin, he took the titles for his chapters from the songs on our record.
M: It’s interesting how the internet creates all these new worlds. When I was creating the album, I was just throwing new ideas on Rupert Murdoch Myspace and you’d get people writing me like ‘Check my work! Check my blog!’ He was like, ‘Read my writing!’ And it ended up his writing was really interesting. As I was recording, he was taking the song titles and writing along with it. But that’s my idea lyrically—by writing with disjunction or different voices, hopefully the person who is listening has more room for interpretation. ‘Commonplace Feathers’ has a line about ‘these matters shook up the community.’ The line is taken from a farming book. People are like, ‘Oh, September 11?’ It’s those things that the culture is putting in and interpreting. A lot of words and images from outside. But we’re creating them as much as any other author who is like, ‘I am the author! I’m speaking from the energy flowing through me!’ If you approach it more conceptually, you can kind of make a statement about the fact that most stuff is regurgitation. A catchy sample or a catchy meme—information that’s surviving and moving into the future.
L: In the book Sebastien wrote—the writing is very much sci-fi. The dystopia he creates in his book—the way people escape it is through this internet world that’s very commercial, where you create your character and go in their shops and buy their things, but this group of hackers has created another world in that world. I don’t wanna give it away but in the world within that world is the black market for culture. It’s where you go to buy all the records the government burned, all the books—to have a meaningful exchange with people.
M: We’ve been reading Virilio and he’s talking about scientific advancements—kind of how science is more destructive because we’ve created a way to completely destroy each other, and the advancements don’t outweigh the negatives. I was reading how in the ‘60s and ‘70s performance artists—a woman could take her top off and walk down the street and get arrested, and they’d say, ‘You’re a woman—you’re not allowed to walk around topless.’ And the woman would say, ‘Oh, I’m a man.’ That was really interesting politically and culturally then. Now with technology you can just get your ID scanned—‘No, you’re a woman!’—and get arrested. Today we have to find new forms. As a performative act, a hacker could hack in and change their gender from female to male, and then they’d walk free!
L: Just to be clear—I don’t endorse anyone hacking anything!
How does someone make music under the domination of the info bomb?
M: Making art that makes people think is really important.
Who has done that for you?
L: I was really into the first Eno and David Byrne record My Life In The Bush of Ghosts. Just the idea to me with all the sampling—you put that record on and it brings up all kinds of things—what you think about, what you haven’t—but it doesn’t preach. And they’re often using samples for simply the way they sound. So anything that encourages anything but passivity.
M: When Lyle and I take samples, that’s kind of the first concern—how it’s working sonically. For our cover of ‘Fire In Cairo’ on the Cure tribute Manimal Vinyl is putting out, we had that sample from the Egyptian workers’ strikes. We were listening to the different commentators—it was less about the language and more about the tonality of the voices, and how it affects the listening experience.
L: I’m listening to Rainbow Arabia and the fact that they take from so many sources is interesting—Middle Eastern sounds, Asian, African—that’s synthesis!
M: Danny from Rainbow Arabia imports all his keyboards from Afghanistan and Iran. We were talking about covering the names on our gear because it’s like branding, and he was like, ‘I have to leave this one—it’s Casio in Arabic.’ There’s something in that—how many people are creating your sound? People are so anti-sample or appropriation, but every synth sound—every plug-in in Logic or whatever interface—how many artists and designers went into making those sounds that we’re using? So many other people were involved in creating our sound. It seems it could go even further. Sampling text—emotive bloggers to corporate propaganda—because there’s already so many creative people giving input into the sound.
L: It’s great that in underground music circles that the obscure is always prized. Instead of rehashing old shit, you’re bringing something new into the cycle.
M: You can’t get away from appropriating. Just from being in a certain environment—all you are is a rehash. You can’t create outside what you know.
Public Enemy sampled Wattstax for sort of the same reasons.
L: The Bomb Squad is a huge thing for me. That brings to mind something Matt said. It’s impossible to not be political—the way the Bomb Squad sampled, it was so claustrophobic—and if you’re not taking anything from that, it’s your fault. There’s so much there.
You have that United States of America sample on the album—what else is in there?
M: ‘Ground’ sampled the EPA and the New York Times. Brooklyn was a really loud place. I recorded in my apartment and there was so much noise. I recorded sirens on my street, ambulances going by, chattering on street corners—and the EPA talking at you.
L: At our live show, we look for all kinds of stuff that catches our attention in the sampler, and because we’re looping through the mic, it’ll pick up some of samples I hit. We have a sample of Hugo Chavez in front of the U.N. yelling that Bush is el diablo, and that will get caught and create some new word.
The Chavez Diablo Vortex?
M: We’ve also been sampling news about the Large Hadron Collider.
L: This amazing propaganda film. ‘CERN in three minutes! CERN is good! The Large Hadron Collider will probably not destroy the universe!’
M: There’s a rap video my friend Kari turned me on to—people rapping inside of CERN.
How’s the production?
L: Godawful.
What would be an appropriate way for someone to build on something you’ve made?
M: However they want.
L: That’s part of the fun. Do whatever they wanna do with it. In a really cool alternate reality world, I imagine in fifty or a hundred years when it’s all dusty in someone’s basement—some kid will find it and sample from it and bring it back to life somehow. There’s a scene in Scratch where DJ Shadow is down in the basement he’s been digging in for years, and he’s basically like, ‘When you’re down here, show respect.’

GANGI WITH WARPAINT, LOCAL NATIVES AND ALEXANDRA HOPE ON MON., MAY 25, AT SPACELAND, 1717 SILVERLAKE BLVD., SILVERLAKE. 8:30 PM / FREE / 21+. CLUBSPACELAND.COM. GANGI’S A RELEASES ON VINYL THIS MONTH ON WHITE NOISE. VISIT GANGI AT MYSPACE.COM/GANGIMUSIC.

Eminence Front and Hula Hoops: Having no choice, I’ll own being the guy who looks like Sting standing in the back of L.A. rock venues scribbling on fragments of actual paper. I don’t mind the work and only tourists take the actual cat before their faces as the for-reals-dawg Gordon Sumner of two decades ago. Thus does my faith in human intelligence dim a little every year at Coachella, the giant music and art festival held annually in remote and dusty Indio. It was my fourth time covering the event and first for L.A. RECORD, a publication I’m happy to report needs zero introduction among the rock cognoscenti swamped inside the variegated mass of bikers, geezers, ravekids, hucksters, b-boyz, flygirls, mainstream families and, yes, tourists; with every twentieth of the latter pointing a tentative digit at my face and mouthing “Aren’t you…” under the all-obliterating sonic uproar. Such hopeful gawkerati also spotted Paris Hilton in the crowd this year, along with Jared Leto, Alicia Silverstone, David Hasselhoff, Reese Witherspoon, Keenan Ivory Wayans and more sweating with the commonality at this Great American Rockshow. Bitsy, my driver and plus-one, has a pleasant form of celebrity as the bomb-ass chick whose hula-hoop workout on the roof of her building in the Hollywood flats draws hundreds of daily spectators, with necks craning from as far as the Roosevelt Hotel. Her hips and hoop carved us a path this past weekend through a mob made agreeable, even buttery, by some of the best music likely ever played in Riverside County.

Time Waits For One Man: The weather on Friday was excellent, so Felix Da Housecat’s set at the Sahara was packed to overflow with ravers and my driver drew the first of many crowds with her hooping. At the big stage, the Airborne Toxic Event disappointed, seeming to wilt a bit in their dark clothes, but the Black Keys turned in a rousing gutbucket-rock set done in the grand manner, channeling the first-wave festival eminences like Deep Purple and the Who. Going next, Franz Ferdinand hit the mark completely, turning in a polished and ferocious performance that rocked many a skeptical veteran of the Glaswegians’ mainstage outings in previous years. The crowd at mainstage next came to grips with Morrissey, with the celebrated (if tubby) romantic opening for headliner Paul McCartney. Alas, we were far away at the Gobi (throwing down to heroic dancefloor sets by Bug and Peanut Butter Wolf) when Moz threw his celebrated bitchfit, storming offstage in the middle of his performance, his still-fetching nose sickened by the smell of frying burgers. Leaving a whirling Bitsy with our cool-as-fuck campmates, I met my friend Kirsten at the Do Lab’s rocking misting station, and we dallied at Silversun Pickups’ triumphant star turn on the Outdoor Stage. I’ve followed these local prodigies from their earliest appearences and they laid into the audience with new songs off Swoon, a long-awaited sophomore album fitting punky rhythms, sheets of decorative noise and an adroit four-fingered salute to Iron Butterfly into the band’s established sound. Guitarist Brian Auber bitched wittily about the Cute Beatle, as the rest of Friday night began shutting down and we drifted to the mainstage for the Act We’ve Known For All These Years.

Anon roared the profound nonsense of “Jet” and a spry and slender sexagenarian named Sir Paul McCartney went on a 33-song stomp though one of the premier music catalogs of the twentieth century. The set incorporated songs by John and George along with a few surprises and a long trawl through his 1970s and ‘80s Wings albums. From the square of way upfront where we stood, it looked like a big chunk of Macca’s present-day fanbase is composed of tender-looking indie-pop kids and these imps were as blown away as any of the hard-bitten journos who raved of Friday’s finale. Like the peachfuzztone young ‘uns prostrate before Roger Waters at last year’s festival, they’d come to see someone (correctly) regarded as one of the Immortals and a still-vibrant presence in their own rock ‘n’ roll lives. Sir Paul outlasted everything else on the lot, going on almost an hour past the 1 AM closing. Looking at beginnings of the second-highest take in festival history, organizers wisely decided the $1000-a-minute the city of Indio charges for after-curfew music was the merest bagatelle.

We Are the Night: The hour was well advanced by the time we made it out to the Polo Grounds on for Saturday’s bop-til-you-drop. Drive-By Truckers were shivering to a bravura conclusion with a cover of Jim Carroll’s “People Who Died” at the Outdoor as Michael Franti & Spearhead (who were playing late-night desert gatherings of Burners just a few years back) were vibing tribally from the big stage. Passing the Mojave stage on our way to dance to the Bloody Beetroots DJ set at the Sahara, I saw a tiny Henry Rollins deep within, belaboring a milling fringe of onlookers like the village atheist. As the sun went down, longtime Coachella vets Thievery Corporation did a rousing beat-heavy set on the mainstage, heavy with their patented thundering harmonics and bracing agitprop. I left the din with a lovely campmate named Kat to check out Booker T. & the DBTs, with members of Drive-By Truckers backing organist Booker T. Jones, venerable anchor of 1960s soul giant Stax Records, in a welter of raw Dixie funk. Our by-then swollen party skipped Turbonegro and passed on M.I.A. for the dance-dance immolation incinerating the Sahara for the rest of the night. I heard about the Killers’ less-than-adequate mainstage turn at soured secondhand and felt glad to have trusted my social instincts, as first mash-up kings Crookers then a DJ set by the Chemical Brothers then a balls-out performance by MSTRKRFT slammed beats into a writhing mob of friendlies, with Chem Bros. lifting an already bliss-dosed, e-sodden, candy-flipped-out mob into the stratosphere with a robot-chant of “Some chemicals are good/Some chemicals are bad.” True dat, but the bad were mainly rotten vibes emitted by a pushy wedge of aristos pitching random helots out of the way a few feet from my group. Online sources credit Paris Hilton and her entourage with the brief disturbance, but from what I saw, the culprits could’ve been any clutch of overdressed Hollywood Boulevard shitheels. It was just like a night in the L.A. underground, minus the sketchy nabes and a chance of being mugged.

Feedback Apocalypse: We’d raged hard the night before and the sun was well along its path before Bitsy and I struck camp Sunday afternoon and loaded out for the festival. Staying since Thursday night at a campground by the Salton Sea with a group of sexy party-hardy Burners had the great advantage of dead calm at night, broken every few hours by the symphonic Doppler roar of a Union Pacific freight train high-balling by. Jointly feeling heat exhaustion and sleep deprivation while singly spacing out from individualized drug intake, we tootled the three-dozen miles to Indio on an overheated engine, arriving just in time to miss Perry Ferrell’s now-traditional Sunday DJ slot at the Sahara. We got our groove on briefly with Plump DJs, before gliding past hundreds of exhausted attendees for whom a hooping hottie and some mutant looking like Sting held no interest. We flopped happily far up front at mainstage as lengthening shadows set the mood for My Bloody Valentine. Management was handing out earplugs at the gate and small wonder, since toward the end of “You Made Me Realise,” guitarists Kevin Shields and Bilinda Butcher (the latter impassive as a Xanax-bombed soccer mom) loosed a gorgeous fifteen-minute-plus feedback annihilation that was easily the loudest thing I’ve ever heard in decades of doting on amplified music. I can’t imagine how the Horrors could hear even themselves going off at the Gobi many hundreds of yards away. It was less a solo than a hideous (and hideously effective) evocation of nightmare; a compressed and aestheticized variation on the opening bombardment at the Somme, another historic din that produced few actual causalties. The crowd, thus blitzed and shit-hammered, was easy mop-up for the Cure, since even the dirgiest of their album tracks sound like 1910 Fruitgum Company by comparison. Bitsy was limp with exhaustion, but these Byronic proto-goths are her favorite-ever band and she was soon slicing circles through the audience with her hoop. I let her decide when she’d had enough and escorted her out when she did, leaving the headliners to what observers described as a power-trawl through B-sides and obscurities that went on until approximately 1:30 a.m. when organizers pulled the plug and the band did two more numbers in the dark. About 70 minutes later, I was standing in front of my crib in Boyle Heights, watching Bitsy’s taillights fade up the street. On my desk was a notice that the cheerful folks at the Lugo Station post office had my ticket to Burning Man 2009. Bon temps roulez, motherfuckos.

—Ron Garmon

All I’ve got to show from Coachella is a sunburn, a pimple, and a busted bottom lip. While there, I enjoyed: half-assed ass shaking to Crystal Castles, Ting Tings, and Girl Talk; Morrissey looking bloated but still croonin’ like a pro; Paul McCartney singing me to sleep as I lay in my tent; worrying that Ariel Pink was either going to melt or collapse into a pile of dust when exposed to daylight; watching Liars (featuring Alex Myrvold of Pizza!) squirm through my favorite songs while I wondered whether their presence signified a new direction for Coachella (towards an aesthetic I find much more attractive and interesting than that of, say, the stupid Killers) or simply reaffirmed my aforementioned belief that some music is best kept in dark places where sweat is produced via dancing hard as fuck rather than by standing in the fucking sun thinking, “I would be dancing right now if I weren’t sweating my balls off!”

And: I guess I do like that one TV on the Radio song; how gross but totally radical it is that M.I.A. can hop and squat and shimmy and slam like that so soon after popping a baby human out of her vagina? I mean, I hate it when people talk about their babies and how their babies are waiting for them so they can only sing seven songs but I’ll take seven songs and some dumb-ass baby banter if it means I also get amazing glow in the dark costumes and hammer-dancing in front of footage of impoverished Sri Lankan militia men while M.I.A performs effortlessly, barely breaking a sweat—unlike Gwen Stefani who looked like a sweaty bag of shit for several performances after birthing Kingston.

And: the Vivian Girls looking too shampooed to have all that hair in their face and doing absolutely nothing new but making me like them anyway—also a case of No One Dancing until my buddy Jack and I started a water-spitting war and got at least 12 too-skinny kids in short shorts to move, although they were mostly just scurrying away from us but really where’s the line between that and the way hipsters dance, anyway? Plus the Vivian Girls really know how to harmonize and they swapped instruments during a coda without any awkwardness at all, a well-choreographed gimmick that reminded me of how cool I felt the first time I switched drivers going 80 on the freeway but then also how I wondered immediately after, “Why did we just do that?” But then I thought immediately after that: “Sometimes it’s good to do something just for fun, even if it could kill you.” Not that the Vivian Girls switching instruments during a song could kill anyone—the analogy really lies in the doing something just for fun part, because you are young so maybe it’s enough that you are new even if what you’re doing is not.

Also—how No Age has really gotten their shit together. They are now a professional act complete with Scott their very own sound guy (ex-drummer for the Soft Boiled Eggies) and Jim Smith who coolly orchestrated the tech guys to get it all just right so that this show actually did get people bouncing up and down and shoving each other a bit. Plus Chloe Sevigny, one of my first female crushes, was there looking like a fancy rancher’s daughter wearing a white dress that was sort of see through if you stared at it long enough and with her golden locks in a tidy French twist. And: how I can’t help but hum along to that goddamned whistly song by Peter, Bjorn and John.

Finally: how watching X and My Bloody Valentine put into perspective all these kids making noisy pop music by recalling the rich and fabled genealogy of this newfangled uprising and putting a sincere (albeit wrinkled) face on sounds that were once something controversial and that today’s babies take for granted… it must be oddly pleasant to play a show you never would’ve been asked to play in your own heyday, knowing that tropes you helped invent are propelling smooth-skinned foals into stardom from what middle-aged critics are carelessly referring to as the “outside” or the “fringes” while you wonder where the hell that leaves you? But I guess that’s how culture propagates itself and blah-blah-blah babies are gross, even when they are not babies but musical movements.

I didn’t get to see Public Enemy because I was busy almost getting arrested. Then I was not allowed back in so I didn’t get to see the Cure either. Lame.

—Drew Denny

L.A. RECORD put photographer Lindsey Best through three dessicating days at the Coachella fun factory and she returned with this giant pile of beautiful photos and without any evidence whatsoever of sun damage to herself. Captured in full glory here are TV On The Radio, Leonard Cohen, M.I.A., No Age, Antony and the Johnsons, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Morrissey, Lykke Li, Public Enemy and many more! Check out albums for Friday, Saturday or Sunday.

Coachella 2009 - Friday

23 Photos

Coachella 2009 - Saturday

25 Photos

Coachella 2009 - Sunday

64 Photos

(from Youth Novels out now on LL)

Soul-pop singer Lykke Li can be so cute and dark simultaneously, singing about heartbreak and insecurity while playing the kazoo around her neck and dancing better than Beyonce. She may one day surpass Sasha Fierce for Youtube videos of 300-pound men imitating the Swedish darling’s moves and clothing. Yes, she has great style, but please, world, stop comparing her to an Olsen twin. This interview by Daiana Feuer.

You say your album is a diary of your life—if we attached a travel guide to Youth Novels, where would we go?
A lot of places in Stockholm. Dark, winter, nights, windy, nobody’s out. Quite depressing, actually. It’s not very glamorous at all. You could come into my bedroom as well. The walls are white. There’s a lot of old black and white pictures that my mom took. I have a black, old piano. I always write about quite sad things but I like to dance as well. I think that’s always going to be a big part of me—conflict within myself, contrast, two forces pulling on each other. I’m not sad all the time—definitely not. But when you’re happy, you’re happy. If you’re eating ice cream, there’s nothing to write about.
What’s the last happy thought you had walking down the street?
It’s been so cold in Sweden and today was the first day of spring. That’s major happiness because it’s so dark and cold here so everybody’s out. So I was very happy today walking down the street. It’s been a very late spring and in the winter it’s dark all the time. When spring comes, people go mad. I mean they’re normal again. In the summer, it’s great. People bike around. They love their alcohol here. It’s a small country but it’s still good.
You spent your childhood in Portugal—what’s your favorite word in Portuguese?
Coração [means ‘heart’]. I was speaking fluently when I lived there but since I don’t speak it here, I’ve forgotten a lot. I can still get by. I went to a Portuguese school so I could write and everything, but I’ve lost a lot.
How many languages do you know?
Swedish, Portuguese, English, I can get by in Norwegian. I think sometimes in English. When I write music, the words come to me in English. I am struggling still with the language so I’m a bit limited, but English is the language I’ve always written in and listened to. It’s a very poetic language and it’s really good if you want to write about love.
Can love be a tangible thing?
It already is—it’s love. It can never be one thing because love is different for everybody. That’s the one thing that will never be a thing. It’s a state of mind.
If you were only allowed to dance or to sing, which would you choose? You would not be allowed to move while singing.
You ask a hard question. Um, sing. I hope this doesn’t happen.
In the chorus of ‘Everybody But Me,’ what’s the third thing you mention?
[Sings:] ‘When everybody’s drinking…when everybody’s smoking…when everybody’s’…ugh, what the fuck do I say? It’s about everybody being high. Oh, [sings] ‘When everybody’s floating.’ Floating on ecstasy.
Do you not do those things?
Yeah, I do those things. Of course. But there was one particular night when I didn’t. When you’re out and everybody’s high and you’re not feeling it. It’s that night.
How did you and Bjorn Yttling [of Peter Bjorn and John] end up working together to produce your album?
We met at a French restaurant on a corner. We bumped into each other and started talking. We were talking about movies and then later on I called him up and begged him to work with me—because we both love All That Jazz.
What’s your favorite scene?
The one when everybody’s naked. I love the whole movie. I love the one in the bathroom when he takes all his pills.
Would you like to be in a movie?
Yeah! I’m in my movie every day.
Do you carry around a camera?
Yeah. I tape things, observations about life.
What’s a recent observation?
[Giggles] Me in the mirror. I was filming myself, and I put some African music on it.
Do you consider different forms of art as separate entities?
No. I just happen to get a bit of success in music, but my mind doesn’t have a limit. It goes sideways, both ways, everywhere. I’m not only thinking about music when I express myself. It’s not even art sometimes—it’s opinions about life. Everything I do has some weird thing to it. When I choose something to eat, that’s as much myself as when I sing.
Do you believe in chance or fate?
I believe in chance and choices and fate. You can definitely control your own destiny but you can’t control the circumstances. You can never set a time-scape to anything. You have fate, knowing things will come if it’s meant to be.
What do you want to do all day when you’re an old woman?
Smoke weed and hang out with my grandkids.
You seem to dig necklaces. What’s your most treasured one?
It’s a crystal my grandma gave me that bounces off bad energy. She passed away so it’s very treasured to me. I wear it all the time. I think grandmother giving a gift to her grandchild is such a powerful thing.
Is there a song that’s hard for you to sing because of what it’s about?
It depends on what kind of mood I am. Some songs or all songs can be hard. I like that feeling when it hurts. I sing better.
Is it weird experiencing a personal moment in front of an audience?
It’s completely natural for me. I took a ballet class when I was five, and I played a show at twelve in the night—because in Portugal we have late shows—and nobody gave me flowers. Then some girl got a flower and I pushed her off stage.

LYKKE LI WITH MY BLOODY VALENTINE, NO AGE, PUBLIC ENEMY, THROBBING GRISTLE, THE CURE, CLIPSE, BRIAN JONESTOWN MASSACRE AND MANY MORE ON SUN., APR. 19, AT COACHELLA AT THE EMPIRE POLO FIELD, 81-800 AVENUE 51, INDIO. 11 AM / $269 / ALL AGES. COACHELLA.COM. LYKKE LI’S YOUTH NOVELS IS OUT NOW ON LL. VISIT LYKKE LI AT LYKKELI.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/LYKKELI.

(from A on Office of Analogue and Digital)

Is your new attic in Glendale healthier than your old bedroom in Williamsburg?
Matt Gangi (guitar/vocals/samples/drums): Definitely. I don’t know if it influenced the record, but there was black mold and mushrooms growing out of the wall—bigger than the size of my hand. And growing out of the ceiling. The place was rent-stabilized and the landlord didn’t care because I was just like a noisy kid paying cheap rent.
He didn’t care if you lived or died?
M: It was pretty terrible. They cut open the ceiling and this green and brown stuff was dripping all over my stuff. My neighbor came down and said, ‘That shouldn’t be exposed! I built your walls out in the ‘60s and that’s asbestos!’
Lyle Nesse (drums/keys/samples/vocals): Matt always called me thinking he was dying—that’s just his personality.
M: I’m a hypochondriac in general.
L: That’s an understatement! But I went up there and there actually were huge fungi and mushrooms growing out of the wall.
M: Completely non-edible.
Did you try?
M: We don’t go that far out, man! People in the building got really sick. In Williamsburg, people were getting all these cancers—sarcomas. Someone got cancer in my building, and the person who lived above me got nose infections from the toxic mold. And he got an autoimmune disease akin to lupus and had to take HIV medication. I was finally like, ‘Hey, man, the album’s done—let’s get on the road!’
When you came to L.A., were you like, ‘Ah, smell that fresh air?’
M: Exactly. Better that than aspergillus.
What are your favorite two songs to DJ together?
L: When we DJ out, Matt and I are pretty much switching every song. I usually bring hip-hop, Afrobeat, some gamelan music—so beat-heavy music and hip-hop and then Matt playing a lot of psych and reissues. So that idea of bringing together all of that and people who listen to all that music, and the people who listen to only that music exclusively.
Have you been to Low End Theory?
M: We’re really into Low End Theory. We were there just the other day to see Gaslamp Killer. He’s amazing. Crystal Antlers played a couple weeks ago. It’s really exciting when these communities come together. There shouldn’t be a separation between those scenes, and there’s not.
What is an information bomb and how do we live in it?
M: We decided before not to burden you with this kind of an interview.
Really?
M: ‘What if we just took it really conceptually and answered by putting every interview question into Google searches?’ Why even answer an interview about ourselves when you can type in a question and get so many voices and experiences? That’s more interesting than anything we could say.
What is interesting then?
M: What’s interesting is what would survive. Lyle comes from a hip-hop background—so it’s which samples survive—which ones are interesting and relevant. What’s interesting about an information bomb in general is the back catalog of information. A catchy little phrase or word combination in the future might be really interesting to people in a way it isn’t now. We played at Little Radio and the sound guy was talking about John Titor. It’s just kind of silly but an interesting idea. That a blog from the past could foretell the future. That’s kind of why I’m into all the reissues coming out now. I’ve really been digging on like Brazilian recordings that made it out when all the psych recordings had been destroyed by the government for being subversive. That Marconi Notaro record.
L: To me what’s interesting is what part is preserved and what ends up in a basement somewhere. From a sampling and beatmaking background—it’s the more obscure things that you as a producer can blow off and bring into the light.
Like the Skull Snaps.
L: Just bringing it back into circulation. Like in psych and folk with all the reissues coming out. It’s so confusing to me that appropriation is looked down upon in some circles. It’s so important to culture to bring things back out.
M: The act of appropriating in general is a political act because of all the things it brings up. Every phrase is like trademarked now—the Situationists had that line ‘revolutionize your everyday life’ and now that’s how products are being sold.
L: You just made me think of the book I’m reading now—by an author Matt’s been corresponding with. Sebastien Doubinsky. For his first draft of his new book Potemkin, he took the titles for his chapters from the songs on our record.
M: It’s interesting how the internet creates all these new worlds. When I was creating the album, I was just throwing new ideas on Rupert Murdoch Myspace and you’d get people writing me like ‘Check my work! Check my blog!’ He was like, ‘Read my writing!’ And it ended up his writing was really interesting. As I was recording, he was taking the song titles and writing along with it. But that’s my idea lyrically—by writing with disjunction or different voices, hopefully the person who is listening has more room for interpretation. ‘Commonplace Feathers’ has a line about ‘these matters shook up the community.’ The line is taken from a farming book. People are like, ‘Oh, September 11?’ It’s those things that the culture is putting in and interpreting. A lot of words and images from outside. But we’re creating them as much as any other author who is like, ‘I am the author! I’m speaking from the energy flowing through me!’ If you approach it more conceptually, you can kind of make a statement about the fact that most stuff is regurgitation. A catchy sample or a catchy meme—information that’s surviving and moving into the future.
L: In the book Sebastien wrote—the writing is very much sci-fi. The dystopia he creates in his book—the way people escape it is through this internet world that’s very commercial, where you create your character and go in their shops and buy their things, but this group of hackers has created another world in that world. I don’t wanna give it away but in the world within that world is the black market for culture. It’s where you go to buy all the records the government burned, all the books—to have a meaningful exchange with people.
M: We’ve been reading Virilio and he’s talking about scientific advancements—kind of how science is more destructive because we’ve created a way to completely destroy each other, and the advancements don’t outweigh the negatives. I was reading how in the ‘60s and ‘70s performance artists—a woman could take her top off and walk down the street and get arrested, and they’d say, ‘You’re a woman—you’re not allowed to walk around topless.’ And the woman would say, ‘Oh, I’m a man.’ That was really interesting politically and culturally then. Now with technology you can just get your ID scanned—‘No, you’re a woman!’—and get arrested. Today we have to find new forms. As a performative act, a hacker could hack in and change their gender from female to male, and then they’d walk free!
L: Just to be clear—I don’t endorse anyone hacking anything!
How does someone make music under the domination of the info bomb?
M: Making art that makes people think is really important.
Who has done that for you?
L: I was really into the first Eno and David Byrne record My Life In The Bush of Ghosts. Just the idea to me with all the sampling—you put that record on and it brings up all kinds of things—what you think about, what you haven’t—but it doesn’t preach. And they’re often using samples for simply the way they sound. So anything that encourages anything but passivity.
M: When Lyle and I take samples, that’s kind of the first concern—how it’s working sonically. For our cover of ‘Fire In Cairo’ on the Cure tribute Manimal Vinyl is putting out, we had that sample from the Egyptian workers’ strikes. We were listening to the different commentators—it was less about the language and more about the tonality of the voices, and how it affects the listening experience.
L: I’m listening to Rainbow Arabia and the fact that they take from so many sources is interesting—Middle Eastern sounds, Asian, African—that’s synthesis!
M: Danny from Rainbow Arabia imports all his keyboards from Afghanistan and Iran. We were talking about covering the names on our gear because it’s like branding, and he was like, ‘I have to leave this one—it’s Casio in Arabic.’ There’s something in that—how many people are creating your sound? People are so anti-sample or appropriation, but every synth sound—every plug-in in Logic or whatever interface—how many artists and designers went into making those sounds that we’re using? So many other people were involved in creating our sound. It seems it could go even further. Sampling text—emotive bloggers to corporate propaganda—because there’s already so many creative people giving input into the sound.
L: It’s great that in underground music circles that the obscure is always prized. Instead of rehashing old shit, you’re bringing something new into the cycle.
M: You can’t get away from appropriating. Just from being in a certain environment—all you are is a rehash. You can’t create outside what you know.
Public Enemy sampled Wattstax for sort of the same reasons.
L: The Bomb Squad is a huge thing for me. That brings to mind something Matt said. It’s impossible to not be political—the way the Bomb Squad sampled, it was so claustrophobic—and if you’re not taking anything from that, it’s your fault. There’s so much there.
You have that United States of America sample on the album—what else is in there?
M: ‘Ground’ sampled the EPA and the New York Times. Brooklyn was a really loud place. I recorded in my apartment and there was so much noise. I recorded sirens on my street, ambulances going by, chattering on street corners—and the EPA talking at you.
L: At our live show, we look for all kinds of stuff that catches our attention in the sampler, and because we’re looping through the mic, it’ll pick up some of samples I hit. We have a sample of Hugo Chavez in front of the U.N. yelling that Bush is el diablo, and that will get caught and create some new word.
The Chavez Diablo Vortex?
M: We’ve also been sampling news about the Large Hadron Collider.
L: This amazing propaganda film. ‘CERN in three minutes! CERN is good! The Large Hadron Collider will probably not destroy the universe!’
M: There’s a rap video my friend Kari turned me on to—people rapping inside of CERN.
How’s the production?
L: Godawful.
What would be an appropriate way for someone to build on something you’ve made?
M: However they want.
L: That’s part of the fun. Do whatever they wanna do with it. In a really cool alternate reality world, I imagine in fifty or a hundred years when it’s all dusty in someone’s basement—some kid will find it and sample from it and bring it back to life somehow. There’s a scene in Scratch where DJ Shadow is down in the basement he’s been digging in for years, and he’s basically like, ‘When you’re down here, show respect.’

—Chris Ziegler

GANGI WITH LION OF PANJSHIR, GOLDEN ANIMALS AND JEFF RAMUNO ‘N’ THE GUNSLINGERS ON THU., SEPT. 11, AT TANGIER, 2138 HILLHURST AVE., LOS FELIZ. 8 PM / $7 / 21+. FOLDSILVERLAKE.COM. AND WITH CRYSTAL ANTLERS, ABE VIGODA, PRINCETON AND MANY MORE AT THE EAGLE ROCK MUSIC FESTIVAL ON SAT., OCT. 4, ON COLORADO BLVD. BETWEEN EAGLE ROCK AND ARGUS. 5 PM / FREE / ALL AGES. MYSPACE.COM/EAGLEROCKMUSICFESTIVAL. GANGI’S A IS OUT NOW ON THE OFFICE OF ANALOGUE AND DIGITAL. VISIT GANGI AT MYSPACE.COM/GANGIMUSIC.