Last week, I got to talk with the rap group Da Circle. The New York based duo, Fatz and Slim, have played in the background for a while, but have just released their debut album, 360 Deal. In connection with the Rebel Army collective, which includes Immortal Technique and Poison Pen, the duo has toured worldwide and some of the biggest festivals hip hop has to offer. Their music has a unique angle. Their content matter and their consistency is what will set them apart from other up and coming hip hop groups. Click the links below for more info.

by Kevin Kunitake

Please excuse the audio quality. We were on a bad connection and there’s a bit of background static.

http://viperrecords.com/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Da-Circle/79594936673
http://twitter.com/#!/dacircle360

Interview with Da Circle by WVAUOnline

In the faraway land of Houston lives a man known to the world only as Jandek. Over a span of thirty-three years he has released sixty albums, but his identity remains a mystery. Once in a very great while, he emerges from his cave of obscurity to perform live and every time people flock to his concerts. Why do these people go? What are they looking for? What are they craving? They are craving the foreboding dissonance of the folk/blues that has hatched from Jandek’s genius.

Jandek has come to be known by the soft, acoustic guitar songs that make up a large part of his repertoire. In each song, his lofty yet earthy vocals are backed by an unconventionally tuned guitar the he masterfully plucks. However, Jandek has collaborated with many other musicians, creating music ranging from the chaotic to the orchestral.

At every step, Jandek seems to slide away from any sort of definition. His fans have formed many different theories to try to explain the music, and factions have occurred along these theoretical lines. Some believe his identity is important, some think it’s irrelevant.

The lyrics are said to be incredibly personal and insightful. Maybe I just haven’t listened to them enough, but I have a hard time even hearing words being spoken. Listening to Jandek, the meanings of all the sounds that we consider words seem to fall away. The words themselves are an instrument. The power of the vocals primarily comes from their particular pronunciation rather than any meaning that might be attached. In one of his more tonal songs, “When the Telephone Melts,” the combination of vowels and consonants add variety to the piece, making the familiar words he used sound strange.

The songs ring of lost innocence. The melodic lines that seem to weave in and out of every song have an incredibly childish tone that sounds burdened by the atonal structure of the instrumentals. One gets the sense that something has been violated, but the object remains unknown. More importantly, who is the violator? Or should this not be a concern of ours?

Jandek remains a mystery, but that is as it should be. His record label Corwood Industries has stated on several occasions that the individual listener’s experience and interpretation is more important than whatever the intent behind the music may be. I personally find no distinct meaning in his songs. Rather, his songs offer a chance to emotionally experience a totally foreign life. Given how trapped we all are within our own perceptions, Jandek’s music is a rare gift indeed.

by Jesse Drucker

We’ve all seen those Blackberry commercials. The “Love What You Do” campaign consists of thirty-second spots blatantly calculated for the 18-to-34 crowd, featuring twenty-somethings doing unique young person activities with the help of their fancy new phones. Come on, Blackberry, we all know the dude who can’t get a proper job other than a bike messenger is jacking his mom’s phone upgrade to snag your glitzy touchscreen model. And can we borrow your faux-Diplo DJ’s throw pillow embroidered with his stage name?

Of course, no desperately pandering TV spot is complete without an indie-rock soundtrack, and though Blackberry could have gone with a more logical clip (the oohs from “White Sky” come to mind) they instead snatched the wordless refrain of “Fiya”, from kitchen sink-folk project tUne-yArDs. tUne-yArDs is the creation of Merrill Garbus, who recorded her entire first release BiRd-BrAiNs in her house on her computer. Enjoying the album requires having a stomach for lo-fi, with the fuzziness even bordering on painful at times. But Garbus has a knack for crafting melodies simultaneously childlike and transcendent, and the standout tracks on BiRd-BrAiNs embed themselves in your stomach and beg to be listened to over and over. Garbus’s chief instrument is the ukelele, mixed with recordings of children’s voices and primitive, clattering percussion. The result is pure sonic clutter, and Garbus’s dark, angry lyrics merely add to the roughness of BiRd-BrAiNs.

One of the comments on the YouTube video for the Blackberry commercial describes Garbus’s voice with suprising accuracy: “it sounds like a guy yelling while hes falling down a mountain.” Garbus indeed spends much of BiRd-BrAiNs squawking, bellowing and just plain yelling her refrains, and though the comment isn’t meant to be complimentary, it pinpoints the versatility and raw power of Garbus’s vocals. Garbus’s distinctive voice takes many forms, as she shifts from a low, masculine purr to a soft head voice to her piercing howl, oftentimes in the same breath. Garbus doesn’t hesitate from sounding downright ugly at moments, but she never loses control of her squawking vocals which always rectify themselves into a soothing equilibrium.

A new tUne-yArDs single recently surfaced, called “Bizness.” Immediately noticeable is how much the improved recording quality enhances everything that made BiRd-BrAiNs enjoyable. It sounds crisper and cleaner, and there isn’t any fuzz to hinder Garbus’s soaring vocals. The instrumentation is more complex (horns!!!), but still maintains the clattering, charm of BiRd-BrAiNs, and gives us a promising look at what’s next for Garbus.

However, if you appreciate tUne-yArDs for anything, it should be for the standout track on BiRd-BrAiNs – bringing us back to “Fiya”. The joke’s on Blackberry, because “Fiya” is a song about being consumed with crippling self-loathing. However, the Blackberry marketing team stumbled upon an incredible song that features Garbus’s most joyful melody yet. Every part of “Fiya” – the recorded kid’s shrieks in the beginning, the tinny ukelele, the slow-building percussion, and the song’s soaring climax – is perfectly constructed, and the song’s rough, primitive ugliness, while maybe not ideal for selling phones, results in its own twisted form of beauty.

by Maeve McDermott

Do you want to sing, dance, tell jokes, or show off any other talent? Do you want to watch your fellow AU students do the same? Come to our first Open Mic of the semester, at 8pm in Battelle Atrium!

Much to the mainstream population’s surprise and my joy, Arcade Fire won the Grammy for Album of the Year for their third album The Suburbs, released this past summer. In lieu of watching the ceremony, I opted for actually being productive, but once I heard news that my favorite band won a top honor, I was absolutely ecstatic, bordering on feeling like a proud mom. The win has been dubbed an upset in the media, and in a category with big names like Lady Gaga, Eminem, Lady Antebellum and Katy Perry, Arcade Fire was the obvious underdog.

The internet quickly exploded with anti-Arcade tweets, status updates, tumbles and the like, all conveying the same sentiment: “How can a group I’ve NEVER heard of win Album of the Year? Who is #ArcadeFire” (as tweeted by @didleigh). A recent blog best compiles the finest of post-Grammy outrage. Rosie O’Donnell’s “album of the year ? ummm never heard of them ever” tweet has become one of the more popular posts. The Atlantic Monthly pointed out that our president, fortunately, is not among Americans unaware of the Montreal-based band.

Probably more surprised about the win was the band themselves, who, once getting over the initial “What the hell?” reaction, graciously accepted the award in English and their native French and decided to perform again, simply put, “‘cause we like music.”

As a dedicated fan, all the Arcade Fire-ignorance is disheartening because the band is far from an underground indie band. Going strong since their critically-acclaimed debut Funeral in 2004, Arcade Fire has grown to be the unofficial kings of alternative. They’ve led numerous tours, headlined endless festivals worldwide, from Lollapalooza to Glastonbury, and recently sold out two nights at New York City’s massive and legendary venue Madison Square Garden this summer (one night of which was broadcast live on YouTube through Vevo, and the other I was lucky enough to be in attendance for — an anecdote I will never miss an opportunity to brag about).

Arcade Fire isn’t a stranger to WVAU.org — the winning album was one of the top-played albums on our rack fall semester and I often hear their tunes emanating from the hallway outside the station. Whether you’re a fan or not, if you’re reading this post, you’re likely on the side of the creator of the “Who is Arcade Fire” blog  rather than the people posted on it.

What I’m sure we can all agree on is that Arcade Fire’s massively media-covered, underdog win will hopefully get the message out to Grammy-viewers like Twitter-user @paulguynj (who tweeted, “How can this group get album of the year when they didn’t even have as many top 10 as Gaga. Did this group even have a number 1?”) that the best music is not necessarily the most popular (although it can be!) and that there are other outlets in discovering music than Top 40 radio stations (like WVAU.org!).

by Marissa Cetin

Kickin’ It Old Skool
Thursdays 12am-2am
Name of Favorite Other WVAU Show
Some Things Considered, Whale Bicycle Bottom

Like so many other current Sam Beam admirers, I first discovered Iron & Wine through The Postal Service’s cover of “Such Great Heights.” Now, almost a decade after Beam’s first and only truly solo full-length album, The Creek Drank the Cradle, Iron & Wine has released his fourth record, Kiss Each Other Clean. During the time in between, Beam’s sound has drastically changed. His first record was recorded on a four-track recorder in his kitchen and featured little more than his acoustic guitar and vocal talents. Still, just as his sound has experienced its own evolution, the independent music scene has seemingly changed too. The rise in popularity of folk-infused and -influenced artists certainly is in debt to Iron & Wine, and – as if he weren’t already – Kiss Each Other Clean should help cement Sam Beam’s place as a staple of modern folk and indie rock.

Kiss Each Other Clean is a very listenable album, building on the mainstream accessibility that Iron & Wine has been afforded by his past two releases. Despite retaining some elitist, indie street cred, it’s an album that your fifty or sixty-something parents can listen to, and they will enjoy it. This may sound lame, but it’s true! If anything, it’s just a testament – of course, along with Beam’s beard growing abilities – to Iron & Wine’s appeal and expanding popularity.

From the record’s opening, chorus-less “Walking Far From Home,” driven by Beam’s skilled storytelling, to its epic closing, “Your Fake Name is Good Enough For Me,” there really isn’t much filler on this eclectic album. There’s a saxophone-driven number with some pretty funky guitar work (“Big Burned Hand”) that leads me to think that Beam has been listening to some Springsteen lately. Another one of the record’s stand out tracks, “Monkeys Uptown,” has a dub rhythm, reminiscent of some of the musical styles Beam began exploring and incorporating into Iron & Wine’s ever expanding sound since 2007’s The Shepherd’s Dog.

While a few Iron & Wine folk standards are found scattered throughout the album, there really is no “standard” sound on Kiss Each Other Clean. “Godless Brother In Love” is probably the album’s closest relative to Iron & Wine’s early material. With an arrangement of layered acoustic guitar, piano, and harmonious oohin’ and ahhin’ backing vocals behind Beam’s sweet voice, this track creates the most somber moments on an otherwise upbeat album. One shouldn’t equate this with boring though, as there really aren’t any dull moments to be found on the record. Upon a first listen, you’re always left wondering what to expect with the next track.

All around, it’s a solid four-and-a-half stars out of five. Fans of recent Iron & Wine records should be able to appreciate his ever-changing sound, but lovers of Beam’s early material will certainly enjoy it too. If for some reason the soothing sounds of Iron & Wine aren’t found in your music rotation, it’s a good place to start and work your way back. Ultimately, Kiss Each Other Clean is a mature yet fun record, and, although 2011 is still young, it should surely make many listeners’ top album lists for the year to come.

by Anthony DeLuise

Last Thursday, guests Flex Mathews and The Unknown came on D’N'A to talk about their past, present and future in the hip hop world.
The duo are rappers based in DC, dominating the local scene with their strong stage presence and complex lyrics.
Flex Mathews, AKA Dathan Harbor, came to WVAU last year with DJ Ed Metaphysical. Last time, he told us of his musical ventures that have come to fruition over the years, but now we see his drive. He is planning on releasing a new album in March and jetsetting on a tour that will be sure to captivate audiences far and wide.

by Dianna Loevner

Feel free to download Flex Mathews’s “The Handsome Grandson EP” on his Bandcamp below:
http://hiphop.bandcamp.com/album/flex-mathews-the-handsome-grandson-ep
http://twitter.com/#!/flexmathews
http://www.youtube.com/flexmathews

Listen to D’N'A on Thursdays, from 2-4pm.

In the early 1960’s jazz scene, freedom reigned, and it was good. The birthing pains of the free jazz movement had ceased, leaving a rich placenta for musicians to feast upon. Emerging from this feast with bloodstained lips of magic came a young tenor saxophonist named Pharoah Sanders. With a brain as big as his sound and a bucket-load of inter-soulular power he was destined to facilitate some of the most inventive and spiritual recording of the era.

Pharoah Sanders entered the New York avant-garde jazz scene in 1961 performing with the legendary Sun Ra. The story goes that Sun Ra gave Sanders his first name after a performance at the Village Vanguard saying that he “had all of Egypt in his horn.” After his stint with Ra, Sanders went on to play with John Coltrane in his final quintet performing on such recording as Meditation and Ascension. It was during this period his Sanders life that his playing began to take on more spiritual qualities. Through the extensive use of overblowing and multiphonics Sanders created sounds that would propel the listeners towards the heavens on a musical journey through the clouds of controlled dissonance.

In 1969, Sanders released his forth solo album Karma. Within this recording lurked the thirty-two minute masterpiece “The Creator Has a Master Plan.” Whenever this song is played Apollo orgasms. Do you understand how hard it is to make a god orgasm? In order to accomplish this feat, one must successfully combine pure technical genius with heartfelt raw emotion. That is exactly what Sanders does in this song.

“The Creator Has a Master Plan” begins soulfully; elements from jazz and African music blend perfectly creating a smooth groove that melts away any tension that may inhibit the listener from truly feeling the song. The vocalist Leon Thomas is featured prominently, masterfully using his unique type of yodeling to lift the listener towards the skies, where the sun possesses an ancient warmth.

The song then descends into chaos. The darkness of the world becomes apparent as overblown blue notes pummel the listener. But from within this darkness a feeling of ecstasy is created. The effect is to remind the listener that even when the world seems to be falling apart tranquility exists if you only reach for it.
And from this transcendental darkness the listener is birthed anew back into the spiritual groove from the beginning. With goo from the birth canal still dripping from their limbs, a chant begins:

The creator has a master plan,
peace and happiness for every man
The creator has a working plan,
peace and happiness for every man
The creator makes but one demand,
happiness through all the land

Having coaxed out the peace and happiness from any person fortunate enough to have chanced upon the recording, Pharoah Sanders leaves you renewed and reborn, ready to go out into the world and fulfill the creators one demand.

by Jesse Drucker

(Ed. Note: This song is really long! So it’s in three youtubes. Listen to all of them.)
Pharoah Sanders – “The Creator Has A Master Plan”

Werewolf Bar Mitzvah
Wednesdays 10pm-12pm Biweekly
facebook page
Show Description
R.I.Y.L: indie rock that isn’t on the Chili’s playlist, feisty ladies, breezy synths, James Murphy, James Brown, anything described as “rollicking,” bleeps, bloops, adjectives, tambourines, Philadelphia, Impossible Soul, listening to Drake without a shred of irony, and hearing me talk to myself on-air.
Name of Favorite Other WVAU Show
Baroque Bicycle Hyphy Considered

Baroqueback Mountain
Fridays 12am-2am
Show Description
Ever dare to dream? Real talk yourself into an intellectual haze every Friday morning. This is what dreams are made of.
Name of Favorite Other WVAU Show
Werewolf Bar Mitzvah, Tea Time, Some Things Considered, Hype Free Weezy

WVAU is putting on a concert tomorrow for our Capital Punishment series! We’re bringing Mal Blum and Man & Dog to give us a real folkstravaganza. It’s in the basement of the Kay Spiritual Center, and totally FREE, which should be enough for any poor college student to show up!

I have never met you, James Murphy. And I won’t ever be lucky enough to cross paths with you. I’m not reviewing or analyzing or criticizing anything in this – I’m just sharing. Since you’re not ever going to read this piece (THAT would be embarrassing), let this serve as a silent tribute to what your music has meant to me.

You could have just let LCD Soundsystem fizzle out, and finish with your tour and quietly transition onto whatever new endeavor that’s next for you. But instead, you’re throwing a giant farewell party in April; open to anyone who’s ever gotten some sort of feeling from your work. You could in theory keep releasing new tracks through an elaborate paid subscription program Jack White-style, in order to drag out LCD Soundsystem’s run and dig into fans’ pockets for as long as possible. But you’ve made it clear that cashing in one last time on the popularity of LCD Soundsystem isn’t your plan, nor has it ever been. You once said in an interview that your goal was simple: To give us really good dance music, music so awesome that we would never want to stop. You said that when bands play live, they worry about recreation rather than creation, with attaining perfection and not making mistakes instead of producing a physical, organic experience. You also said that you’re not a big fan of computers, that if you don’t own the record you don’t feel like the music is yours. And it makes perfect sense, because you can’t listen to an mp3 and hear it crackle, and have to get up and adjust the needle when the record starts to skip in the same place that it always skips every other time. Sure, someone else will buy that same record, but it won’t be the same listening experience. Their record will skip in a different place, and crackle a little differently. It’s organic, isn’t it?

I can sit and try to examine specific aspects of your music, but it’s a waste of time. If I really wanted to, I guess I could dissect “All My Friends” into its individual parts, into its drum patter and pounding keys and all the other aspects of the song that contributes to its feeling. Plenty of people have done that already. If I wanted that, I could just pull up the Sound of Silver review on Pitchfork and let those folks tell me their formula for how the album makes me feel. But will a 9.2 rating ever really explain why “All My Friends” has its own powerful heartbeat, or why every time I hear it I want to cry? Pitchfork isn’t organic, and neither are subscription clubs or iPods or this article, even. But your music is.

If I manage to snag a ticket to your massive going-away bash, I’ll finally be able to bear witness to your elusive skill of taking a song that I’ve heard scores of times before and, rather than recreating the experience of the album, transforming it into a brand new sound. As with any good farewell party, I’ll probably cry, but I doubt that’s what you want from your fans. You’ll just want us to dance.

by Maeve McDermott

With a new year comes new things for WVAU.org. Starting this week, if you visit WVAU.org, you’ll be greeted by articles written by our new web team. In order to give you a little taste of what we have in store for this semester, each member wrote about which albums they’re looking forward to in 2011.

Anthony DeLuise

It’s been four years since Explosions In The Sky released All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone, a record that added some piano to their usual epic, guitar-layered sound. For a band that can play seven to eleven minute long instrumental songs without becoming boring, their upcoming album Take Care, Take Care, Take Care should be nothing different. Asobi Seksu’s new record Fluorescence, due out in a few weeks, is another record I’m excited for this year. This shoegaze duo from New York City has in recent releases moved away from their early works’ noisy sound but should still be something I’ll check out. Last on my radar for 2011 is Starfucker’s Reptilian. After releasing a short EP last year, Reptilian should provide some fun and poppy electro songs for all your dance party needs this spring.

Marissa Cetin

TheShinsTheShinsTheShins, The Shins! It’s been four years since they released their last album, and in the meantime, James Mercer paired with Danger Mouse to put out a bitchin’ album under the name Broken Bells. But like most things in life, people tend to prefer the original, and I want back the band that made that masterpiece of a song, “Caring is Creepy.”
Radiohead is also set to put out a new album this year, and after In Rainbows colored my world in 2007, I’m ready to see what they’ve got next. Chances are it will be as awesome, if not more, than previous albums, but with almost two decades passed since the single “Creep” was first released, I’ve got to wonder what new musical stops they could possibly pull out after 19 years of fantasticalness.
I’m also pumped for the much-hyped Kanye and Jay-Z collaborative album because — do I really need to give a reason?!

Jesse Drucker

Now that 2010 has rolled back into the sands of time and we find ourselves trotting along in 2011, it’s time to check out what musical landscape we’re getting into. Having surveyed the land, I can tell you that Sonny Smith’s new project with the Sandwitches’ Heidi Alexander, Story of an Earth Girl, appears to be the most exciting album on the horizon. It began as part of Smith’s solo project, 100 Records, wherein he wrote 100 singles for 100 fictional bands. From the released track “Hit After Hit,” it appears to be some beautifully done 50’s rock’n’roll throwback. At close second, I have high hopes for Thurston Moore’s Benediction. Produced by Beck and incorporating harp and violin, this album could turn out to be just what the doctor ordered as we attempt to tread through the year ahead.

Maeve McDermott

2011 has already been a solid year, featuring awesome releases by Cloud Nothings, Destroyer, Smith Westerns and Tennis (let’s not talk about Iron & Wine and Bright Eyes…), and is building up to be an exciting year for music as a whole. Big names in music are returning, important releases are slated the next few months, and the ever-growing hype just makes things even more interesting. Good albums will become smash hits, bad ones will elicit generous doses of scorn, and the boring releases will be the most disappointing of all. Here are a few upcoming releases that I can’t wait to love/hate/forget.
Fleet Foxes: Helplessness Blues
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart: Belong
The Strokes: Angles
Cut Copy: Zonoscope
The Rural Alberta Advantage: Departing
Aaaaand… Kanye West/Jay-Z: Watch the Throne

Zarek Chase

My standards for a ‘good year for music’ are unimaginably high now, since 2009 and 2010 were such amazing years for new releases. M83 looks most promising, as he announced that his new album would be a return to the darker style he displayed in his amazing album Before The Dawn Heals Us. I’m also looking forward to Panda Bear’s Tomboy, Toro y Moi’s Underneath the Pine, and James Blake’s first self-titled LP. And maybe, just maybe, if we’re all good little boys and girls, then The Avalanches and Kraftwerk will both release their announced, much-awaited albums (Prediction: This Will Not Happen).

What albums are you dying for in 2011? Comment on this article and tell us!