We here, at All Our Noise, find ourselves very excited for the coming year. Over the last couple of months we’ve worked at revamping our monthly DJ night, Marquis, and are particularly amped about unveiling these updates.

Marquis has always strived to highlight local DJs and their differing styles. This year, however, we want to make it perfectly clear that we’re highlighting not only the regular indie, pop and club fare that we normally have, but we’re also providing an outlet for more minimal and downtempo styles as well.

For the new year, Marquis will now be held First Fridays at Red Lounge, with the first installment kicking off this week, January 2, 2009. This time around, there will be two floors, instead of one. All Our Noise is curating the main room upstairs and will feature offerings typical to Marquis (indie, pop, electro, club). In addition, Swedish Columbia is curating the downstairs room for the minimal electro and downtempo. DC has always had a strong electronic music scene and we would be remiss if we did not represent the wide palette of electronic music.

And to commemorate the improvements to Marquis, we offer you two exclusive mini-mixes to highlight some of the styles that will be featured over the coming months. 

This month in particular, the upstairs represents the Sun and downstairs, the Moon. We’ve featured the club stuff plenty on these pages before, so we figured we’d highlight the deeper and minimal aspect of our night with the Moon Mix. (More after the jump).

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Deleted Scenes‘ approach to crafting songs is as old-school as it gets. They tour incessantly, testing new songs out on the road.  They let their compositions breathe and develop- well before ever pressing record. Their debut album, Birdseed Shirt, was two long years in the making, and I was fortunate enough to see and hear their entire process from initial drafting to finished recording.

Never relying on studio trickery, each band-member is very proficient on his own instrument.  Hell, frontman Dan Scheuerman is known to do at least 15 minute vocalises before every performance, much to the chagrin of his fellow bandmates.

But if you can believe it, Deleted Scenes‘ instrumental chops come a mere second to their notable talents in song-writing. Though they are meticulous in crafting every detailed aspect of a song, they can also recognize when something becomes too esoteric or abstract. They have the sense to stop themselves before going too far.  Deleted Scenes manages to strike the elusive balance between technical flair and pop sensibility. Their progressions and melodies are well-thought out, but never forced. Yet their performances retain a natural whimsy and authenticity. Theirs are classic songs that demand more than a single listen before various layers emerge.

A good deal of the songs complexities are owed to Dan’s lyrics, and his strong sense of narrative conflict. Some of that tension, which he addresses in several songs, stems from growing up deep within suburban Maryland.  And although Dan would likely disagree, I maintain that his religious upbringing must underlie the palpable anxiety evident in the semi-autobiographical subjects of his songs. [Read more →]

Sometimes you come across records you like because of your specific musical tastes. Other times it’s because you know the people in the band or have seen them play many worthwhile shows. Still other times it’s to see what all the hype for a certain band or album is about. And then there are the records that come from the shadows and knock you off your feet. Such is the case with Inca Ore’s Birthday of Bless You. While going over the Not Not Fun website I came across a boldened announcement stating that there was one final repress of 85 copies of this limited release LP. The description caught my attention with turns of phrase such as,”psychedelic secrecy, rippling whispers, and private ghost ballads.” I knew that I was destined to own this album.

Inca Ore is better known as Eva Saelens, and is a member of celebrated, spacey psych group Jackie-O Motherfucker. Listening to her solo work you can certainly understand why. Birthday of Bless You, as soon as the needle drops, comes quietly out of the darkness whispering a language of haunted beauty. The entire first side flows like a blissful river carrying the listener on the hypnotizing tone of Eva’s voice. Layered with deep reverb, and lo-fi aesthetic, the music transcends typical expectations in favor of a much farther off spiritual dimension.
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Christmas music has always been a guilty pleasure of mine, so each year I’m always excited to see what bands will cover traditional yuletide tunes, and which will create some of their own. The turnout has hardly been disappointing — the season’s generated such gems like “Candy Cane Children” by the White Stripes and The Flaming Lips’ Christmas On Mars, Wayne Coyne’s wacky lo-fi/sci-fi film and soundtrack almost 8 years in the making. In the past, compilations like Maybe This Christmas Tree, Maybe This Christmas Too, and even The O.C.’s Chrismukkah Mix introduced songs by a bevy of indie rock groups, including Rilo Kiley, the Raveonettes, the Long Winters, and the Eels. While not all of them were the happiest songs in the world, the overall tone of these mixes was still cheerful.

When ForceField PR head Daniel Gill sought to compile songs about Christmas, it seems cheer was anywhere but at the forefront of his mind. That isn’t to say this is a particularly cynical compilation, but when you really think about the season — the accompanying bouts of S.A.D., fiscal pressures compounded with holiday shopping, the burden of having to travel home for the holidays — it’s pretty evident that the holidays aren’t always happy. Yet when we get down to the brass tacks of the occasion, it’s hard to not feel a glimmer of hope as it comes closer to crunch time, even if that glimmer comes in a moment of self-reflection over a glass of mulled wine.

Running the gamut from the accessible to the slightly weird, some of the standout tracks on the album include Figurine’s “The Holidays Behind Us,” an electronic lament over a couple’s breakup during the holidays — at times channeling one of Jimmy Tamborello’s earlier works, The Postal Service’s “Nothing Better” — and Man of Arms’ short but sweet “It’s Christmas Time and Everything’s Wrong,” a strong acoustic song that makes amends with itself at the end. Also included on the album is a cover of “Shenandoah” by D.C.’s very own Le Loup (whose former member May Tabol we recently filmed for an AON session) and the pApercuts’ synthy instrumental rendition of “Go Tell It On the Mountain.”

Whether enjoyed alone or with friends, I’ll Stay ‘Til After Christmas is a welcome soundtrack to the cold nights leading up to the holiday. All the proceeds from Gill’s compilation — readily available on iTunes and Amazon.com — benefit Amnesty International.

By 1997, both myself and the members of Pavement were just about over the “hype.”  Well maybe myself more than they, after seeing the band’s brief and bizarre appearances on stadium JumboTrons and Music Televisions disappear as quickly as they came.  In the few short years beforehand, their discography saw a transition from the critically acclaimed rock savior Crooked Rain to the confusing genre-bending epic Wowee Zowee.  I’m not sure anyone quite knew what to expect from Pavement’s 4th full length LP, Brighten the Corners.

When I first awkwardly met Steve Malkmus in 1995, his freshly mud-pelted Free Kitten t-shirt was still drying from a nightmarish Pavement set at Lollapalooza West Virginia; it was apparent then that they weren’t ever going to fit in with the Cypress Hill crowd.  No matter, as I was ready to tread along with wherever the band was going, as dirty as it might get, and Brighten the Corners was a pretty shiny path to follow.

The gems on the Brighten LP are obvious: the wacky word play of “Stereo” and the sweet croon of “Shady Lane” are its strong points. The rest of the record took me some getting used to, and involved sticking around the mellow openings in order to hit the rock swells inside “Embassy Row” and “Old To Begin.” Songs didn’t hit you as hard or as quick as anything Wowee Zowee, and it wasn’t to be like any other Pavement LP from before.

The brand new Nicene Creedence extended package is continuous bliss for hardcore fans and gives us some of the best Pavement tunes ever, which ended up all being more quick-take B-Sides: ”Harness Your Hopes” could have been a big hit if fully realized, “Slowly Typed” was a jangle rock version almost superior to the LPs “Type Slowly,” and knockoffs like “No Tan Lines” and “Cherry Area” were catchy and brilliant in their slacker swagger. Pavement’s cover of Echo and the Bunnymen’s “The Killing Moon” has been a long time favorite of mine and is essential.  I collected all these songs at the time through whatever Japanese Import single I could get my hands on; a lot of us hardcore fans realized that some of the best tunes were now found this way.

Although probably not my favorite Pavement LP altogether, I had a very personal experience with the band around the Brighten time: I designed a tour poster from a contest I entered in a local indie rock rag that band members themselves seemed to like enough to scribble their autographs on (see above right), and caught the band numerous times over the course of the tour. I felt that the mellow attitude portrayed on Brighten wouldn’t necessarily stick around; once Terror Twilight surfaced it became more and more a full-on Malkmus project than a collaboration and Brighten served as a pre-cursor into descent.

I, like so many others, devoted most of my musical twenties following the trail blazed by Malkmus and company, and didn’t quite make it to any sort of Brighten phase. (Click here to watch me and some of my best pals do our best impression!) If modern indie rock bands had even a fifth of the songwriting prowess displayed on the later Pavement LPs, we wouldn’t now be experiencing so many sophomore and junior slumps — but I guess they just don’t make ‘em like they used to.

Though one of the newer bands in town, Pree has nevertheless been spreading their expressive tunes all around, making their rounds at the local clubs, some smaller venues & house shows. And in the process, leaving their pretty melodies embedded deeply in the minds of all who hear.

The band take their name from a Neutral Milk Hotel song, “A Baby For Pree,” and appropriately so as these songs share a similar, timeless narrative quality. 

Led by May Tabol of Le Loup, her voice at times recalls early Chan Marshall or Woelv, accompanied here by Chris Dewitt on drums. Their live line-up is rounded out with David Barker on guitar and Vanessa Degrassi on mandolin and flute. 

Their full-length is still a few months from release, but look for it to feature some familiar names in the liner notes, as the album features contributions from members of These United States, Exit Clov, Donny Hue & The Colors, and more. Slated for release on The Kora Records this spring, you probably want to go ahead and mark your calendar from now. 

Pree play The Velvet Lounge on Tuesday, December 9 with PWRFL Power, Hume, and Kitty Hawk.