Thursday, Apr 19 - All Rooms
Tiny Victories: EP Release Party
w/ Dinowalrus, NewVillager, Slam Donahue, North Highlands, Evi Antonio, The Forms, New Moods, DJ YRS TRLY, & More TBA
Thursday, Apr 19
8:00 pm in the All Rooms
$10 / 21+
Tiny Victories is Greg Walters and Cason Kelly. Their debut EP drops Feb. 28. It’s a big sound for just two guys. In their live show, they play electronic music with an array of samplers and gadgets and live drums—no laptop. They’ll sample crowd noises with a microphone during the set, process it live, and weave it into the songs. Their show has an uncommonly organic, improvisational feel for electronic music. I’ve seen crowds completely change when Tiny Victories takes the stage. If you ask Greg and Cason about it, they’ll tell you every song is an experiment. Each uses a method they’ve never tried before. It’s a process that’s impossibly complicated—they’ve tried to explain it to me, and I just nod my head and stand back. They formed the band in 2010 after meeting in Brooklyn. Cason moved there from Athens, GA, and spent his early 20s doing social work with inner city kids. Greg, born in DC, moved to New York after six years as a foreign correspondent, covering a war (Russia-Georgia) and two revolutions (Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan). If you ask them to tell you a story, get ready for a crazy one. Those Of Us Still Alive is their debut album. But these songs don’t sound like a band’s first effort. They have the confidence and consistency of a mature project. It’s an album about how the outside world might not be as bad as it looks, or maybe it is. And it’s about ghosts that won’t shut up.
DINOWALRUS is psychedelic synth-punk band from Brooklyn, NY comprised of former Titus Andronicus guitarist Pete Feigenbaum, synth and bass wizard Liam Andrew, and veteran drummer Max Tucker. Pete started the band in 2008 and they quickly grabbed attention with a long run of local and regional shows with the likes of Javelin, Surfer Blood, Health, Real Estate, Screaming Females, A Place to Bury Strangers, Crystal Stilts, Titus Andronicus and These are Powers. They started 2009 strong with a 7" release that was distributed by Impose and RVNG, another 7" release on the Australian label EXO, plus a tour to SXSW with the Australian post-punk band Bachelor of Arts. In January 2010, DINOWALRUS put out their shape shifting, eclectic and erudite debut, %, on Kanine Records (Surfer Blood, Chairlift, Grizzly Bear). The album was a unique, structurally unorthodox, unpredictable mélange of krautrock, synthpop, shoegaze, acid-rock, noise, and thrash-punk that was well received in underground circles, but was generally ignored by broader indie-rock audiences. In the year that followed, The band toured the east coast and California with the likes of Titus Andronicus, Fang Island, Aa, Signals (ex-mae shi), and Tempo no Tempo.
North Highlands—the place, not the band—is, as Brenda Malvini puts it, “a gnarly suburb trapped in time. It sounds like a beautiful name but it’s not a beautiful place.” Located just outside of Sacramento, North Highlands once housed a military base, and also Brenda, who relocated to New York City as quickly as the town would let her out. She went to NYU, where the majority of North Highlands—we’re talking about the band now—also went, all of them “graduating or not graduating,” as they put it, a couple of years ago. Brenda was writing songs, but keeping them secret, until a friend booked her a show and said, “do it.” Unable to resist, Brenda enlisted her friends to fill out the bill. Mike Barron helped out on guitar, Jasper Berg on percussion, Daniel Stewart on guitar, violin, and mandolin and Andy Kasperbauer on bass. The result of the show was the band, and later, the record. Brenda rewrote the lyrics to the songs right before recording them, which might contribute to their casual, communal, spontaneous feel. Her voice is like a cross between Jolie Holland’s gravelly birdsong and something softer—she sings like a woman who is weary but not too much so yet. She’s still audibly young. “Benefits,” the band’s first single, is about that weariness. Brenda puts it simply, “it’s when you work hard your whole life and then it isn’t enough.” It’s not a sad song, though, not exactly. “You realize that,” and you can hear her smiling when she says it, “and you just say fuck it and go dancing.” “Benefits” also comes with a counterpoint. “Bruce” is also about the sad realization that everything just sucks sometimes, and about how sometimes you can’t go dancing, you just have to give it up, say fuck it, and hide in a hole for awhile.
Slam Donahue are a pop band. The members are David Otto (vocals/guitar), Thomas Sommerville (bass/vocals), and Keenan Mitchell (drums). The songs reflect their personalities, anxieties. They are sometimes rappers, writers, actors, models, and filmmakers. They enjoy Xbox basketball and reading.
The seeds of New Moods sprouted a couple years ago in small house on the outskirts of Bushwick. After hours of overhearing his housemate artist/vocalist Billy Jones (Other Passengers) feverishly writing and recording rough demos for a solo project, producer/engineer Sean Maffucci (Icewater Scandal) was quickly inspired to get involved. Having spent the better part of the last 4 years producing and engineering albums from his Junkyard studio, (Bear in Heaven, Gang Gang Dance , et al) Maffucci knew he wanted to contribute. With the help of his magical hands, he quickly laid down some beat and synth programming over an early version of the song “Dying/Trying.” Immediately upon first listen Jones and Maffucci knew they were on to something special – thus the birth of New Moods. While not denying any genre as an influence, New York City Post-World dance rock band New Moods is constantly looking forward through hazy borders of objectivity. While never forgetting the 80′s New Wave movie soundtracks they heard growing up, the music is consistently focused on new directions in sound. Rhythmic elements sometimes reminiscent of a cross between Urban Dance and Baile Funk seamlessly mixed with catchy pseudo-pop melodic synthesizer progressions inspired by Raï and UK Acid-House. They draw the listener in with dark introspective lyrics, along with Anatolian guitar sounds seemingly flowing from the Bosporus to create a memorably dynamic sound. Whether it be physical or emotional — New Moods is moving. After playing a dozen shows as an electro-two piece, New Moods have recently been joined by Melati Malay (Young Magic) and Steve Garofano (Wolff).
