“California” (Used 18 times)

"Combed Over Chrome" is an interstellar beat-blast to launch minds into warp.

California's Raleigh Moncrief grew up composing music on tracker software, transcribing guitar parts into digital sequence in the pre-mp3 era of the Commodore 64. Members of the tracker scene were music filesharing pioneers, and Raleigh naturally took to the web to release the Combed Over Chrome EP via his own Obstructive Vibrations netlabel.

OV also helped introduce us to some of the many talented musicians who run in Moncrief's Sacramento circle like Hexlove, Appetite and Pregnant. Alongside Death Grips, Moncrief seems to be leading the local beat-oriented scene, but he is a truly eclectic collaborator—playing with the likes of Zach Hill (Hella), The Advantage, and Marnie Stern—and a producer of albums by Ganglians and 'sound design' for Dirty Projectors' Bitte Orca.

Anticon recently released Raleigh's debut LP, Watered Lawn. Check out the "Lament For Morning" video, directly by Moncrief himself, after the jump. Raleigh Moncrief plays live on my WFMU program this Thursday May 10th at 10am.

Raleigh Moncrief @ WWW  |  Twitter  |  Facebook  |  Soundcloud  |  FMA

Fine Steps started out as a solo recording project from Julian Elorduy, drummer of the Mayyors and leader of the Standard Tribesmen.  We had the chance to witness Mayyors tear the roof off WFMU's SXSW showcase a couple years back (listen here).  Standard Tribesmen took a slightly more traditional approach to their blown-out garage-punk judging by the lone 7" on Mt St Mtn released before the group splintered.

The early Fine Steps home recordings sound a bit like John Dwyer's pre Oh Sees experiments, some sort of west coat OCS transitional moment on the porch.  I picked out a couple tracks below.  "Our Love is Strange" comes from Muff On Both Sides.  If it was in fact run through two Big Muff distortion pedals, those pedals must have had the gain knob turned down low.  "I Know This is Crazy" off Crutches echoes the Pacific Northwest sounds of Karl Blau.

Hopefully all of these sketches will get fleshed out more in future times.  For now, "Tomorrow for All of Today" hits that spot.  It's off a forthcoming LP (label TBA) recorded with a 5-piece Fine Steps band featuring two members of harmonizing phased-out garage melters Ganglians.  I haven't heard the rest of the album, but I have heard that it was mixed by Robbie Moncrieff, which bodes well; he's also collaborated with the likes of Marnie Stern, and his production for Dirty Projectors's Bitte Orca fueled some of his own fantastic releases as Raleigh Moncrief.

Fresh off appearances at Montreal's Mutek and the 2011 WFMU+FMA SXSW Showcase, Sun Araw took a first-ever trip to the WFMU studios for a live session!

Originally envisioned as a solo project from Magic Lanterns' Cameron Stallones (also ex-Pocahaunted), Sun Araw has evolved into a full band live performance experience alongside a flood of releases from labels like Not Not Fun, Woodsist, Leaving Records, and Araw's own Sun Ark.

The Sun Araw band features Cameron Stallones on guitar/synth/vocals, backed by two equally awesome players: Barrett Avner (also of Sadistic Candle) on the Shahi Baaja (pictured at left) & Monotron, and Alex Gray (Deep Magic / Deep Tapes) on extra guitar + MPC.

The session commenced with a 30+ minute improv to get in the zone for one new song, and one old song. The studio version of "Crown Shell" will be available on Ancient Romans, the forthcoming Sun Araw 2xLP due out on Sun Ark via Drag City August 23rd 2011. Ancient Romans will be Sun Araw's fifth full-length in three years, and "Crown Shell" provides a staggered, spacious, aquatic, and deeply hypnotic glimpse at what's to come. The band closed out with "Hive Burner," a psych-rock comet that originally appeared on Sun Araw's 2008 debut, The Phynx. 

Sun Araw's WFMU session was rec'd on June 7th and aired on June 9th [playlist for Talk's Cheap/WFMU, June 9th 2011]. If you like what you hear, dig deeper into the Sun Araw universe here and at sunaraw.com.

The great Sacramento CA label S.S. Records celebrates their 10th Anniversary this Friday, Saturday and Sunday, with three shows in San Francisco (details).

HERE is EFFIZODE 26 of THE LAST PLACE ON EARTH with MIKE MATTHEWS and his special guest HEY ROSETTA!Listen here...http://michaelmatthews.podomatic.com/entry/2011-04-08T21_42_32-07_00Hello this is Mike Matthews boarding the bus that takes us to THE LAST PLACE ON EARTH.  Today's half hour of happy includes more of our interview with the phenomenal Newfoundland band Hey Rosetta! plus Chely Shoehart our 18 year old giftshop supervisor discovers a horrible secret about herself and Floyd the Floorman finally puts his foot down!  In a bucket!  What's up with him?  It's all coming up next at THE LAST PLACE ON EARTH!Glen Beck is leaving Fox.  Here's the thing...it's not like he's retiring.  He's still going to be on radio and doing little features and still having a presence across the so called "un-liberal media."  Is the Tea Party turning into a party of quitters?  Palin?  Beck?  Is it "we're going to take BACK America!" or "I'm going to take a nap...on my BACK."This week we explore the very prevalent phenomena in our culture of aging rockstars.  What was once deemed cooler than cool is now turning into a bunch of guys who can't hit high notes that smoked way too much and just aged like the rest of us...or aged worse than the rest of us (but had fun doing it!).  I'm hearing a lot lately about what it's like to work for Google.  I think that I will never be able to work there, but if I did I would be treated to free laptops, free computer swag of all sorts, a cafeteria that is being completely misnomered by calling it that for it's more like a gourmet restaurant with incredibly healthy food and every service under the sun: on sight doctors, fitness trainers, doggy kennels, childcare.  Utopia has been found on Earth and its name, strangely enough, is Google!Oh, by the way, here's something else I found out...If you're looking for a job and you think you've got an "in" somewhere and it turns out one day that your "in" person tells you, "Oh, you want a job here?  I can't help you.  You have to apply like everybody else."  This happened to a friend of mine.  How is that person even an "in" person?  People claim they "know" people all the time.  If you live here in the Bay Area, stop thinking that you're special that you know someone at Pixar!  EVERYONE knows someone at Pixar!  Someone in my computer class said they knew someone at Pixar and they "were so cool to work for!"  Yeah, you know what?  It's Hollywood.  When they're making a movie, nobody goes home.  It's work all day and night.  You have no life.  Working for Pixar is your life so you might as well find a nice little overpriced (even in this economy) condo in Emeryville and just not even move in cuz you'll never live there.  I had my head bitten off in computer class for saying that.  "No programmers have lives!" said one of the young pock marked fresh faces sitting next to me.  Well, go for it, little youngin'!  Tell me how that works out for you when you're 40 and you've gone through 80 relationships with women who didn't want to stick around because you were never around cuz you were working on the next disney-formulaic movie to get nominated (and not win) for Best Picture.Oh...excuse me.  I watched a Lewis Black special last night.  in a ranting mood!In my intro song for this week's show I sing about how I overheard someone (this also happened to be in my computer class...god I get some material from that class!) get upset because someone else was invading their personal space.  You know what invades my personal space?  I've said it before, but people yelling on their cellphones in a public place.  How can we be living in 2011, the cellphone being around for well over 20 years, and people are still yelling on those?  Etiquette, people!  I don't care how your friends talk on the cellphone when in the privacy of your own group, when you're loud, you're loud!  We can ALL here you!  If we were smart, we should all tell you EXACTLY WHAT YOU SAID when you end your call.  You want privacy?  I don't think so!Thanks a lot Lewis!  You've made my blog more ranty than usual.  Okay.  Well, enjoy this week's show.  Hey Rosetta! and their lead singer, Tim Baker, talk to us in more of our interesting interview with them, plus, as you read earlier, craziness ensues with some of the cafe characters.  Subscribe on iTunes at...http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/michaelmatthewss-podcast/id318601461Next week it's more of our interview with singer/songwriter Irene Pena as well as a visit from the Disgruntled Fiddle Player and the Brewmaster.  We could all use a brew these days!MikeMikeTalks.blog.com