Optical Atlas

The Optical Atlas streaming jukebox has been updated with 11 more tracks. This week it’s something a little different: we’re spotlighting artists on the Athens label Happy Happy Birthday to Me, including Bearsuit, The Smittens, Patience Please, Andy from Denver, Cars Can Be Blue, Casper & the Cookies, Keith John Adams, High Water Marks, Fishboy, Bunnygrunt, and Hotpants Romance. Two of the tracks are from the label’s ongoing singles club. For ordering info, check out the HHBTM website. Enjoy!

The Elephant 6 news has been coming fast the last couple of weeks, and here’s more:

• NPR’s Second Stage,  in recent podcasts, has spotlighted The Music Tapes‘ “The Minister of Longitude” and Nana Grizol’s “Circles Round the Moon.”
• Largehearted Boy has Julian Koster’s reading recommendations.  Once again he will make you wish that it were winter.
• Chris Yetter has uploaded a 2GB video file of the Popfest Fat Planet performance, which you can download and burn to DVD.  Find it in this Townhall thread.

You Ain’t No Picasso has announced that These Are Not Records has released a new 10″ single from Elf Power, Venus and Mercury, the A-side a non-album track (from the In a Cave sessions) that YANP shared in MP3 form a few months back.  The B-side is the previously unreleased “Mutiny.”  It’s pressed in translucent brown vinyl in a limited edition of 575 copies.  You can order it now for $8.00 at the These Are Not Records site.

The Music Tapes are SPIN online’s Artist of the Day.  You can read the blurb right here.  They also give the new album, Music Tapes for Clouds and Tornadoes, a 3.5 out of 5.0 in their review.  No Ripcord is even more positive, and Tiny Mix Tapes is verbose in its appreciation. (Thanks to orbitingstuff and wilson for the links.)  Personally, it’s in strong competition for my favorite album of the year so far.

UPDATE: Here’s a video You Ain’t No Picasso posted today of The Music Tapes performing “The Television Tells Us” at Popfest last weekend:

UPDATE UPDATE: Also there’s an interview with Julian Koster in the most recent issue of Flagpole, and you can read it here. Further intimations of a tour!

Currently working out the specifics of a national – and perhaps international – tour is on Koster’s mind, and he says he’d like to hit the road in October, circling the country on some sort of an Elephant 6 Revue jaunt (although he’d never call it that), perhaps focusing on Music Tapes stuff, perhaps more. He has ideas of a big stage performance involving “me, W. Cullen Hart, Scott Spillane, many more, a whole ton of us, playing all of our music as an orchestra, a special program, all sorts of nice things,” he says.

The embryonic Elephant 6 band Fat Planet’s reunion at Popfest, featuring Robert Schneider, Bill Doss, Will Cullen Hart, Pete Erchick, and Charlie Johnston, is now available for download at Flat Response. It’s the first in a series of Popfest recordings which the blog is hosting, with the plan being that one will be posted each day. (Thanks to Daniella for the photo.) Also expect some high-def video of the performance to surface soon. I’ll get some use out of this “Fat Planet” tag yet.

A short while ago I posted dates for the upcoming Dressy Bessy tour – now those dates have been expanded. (Thanks to You Ain’t No Picasso, or I wouldn’t have noticed.) The new album, HOLLERandSTOMP, comes out September 16 on Transdreamer Records.

Dressy Bessy Tour Dates
9/13- Monolith Festival, Morrison, CO
9/19- Replay Lounge, Lawrence, KS
9/20- Vaudeville Mews, Des Moines IA
9/21- The Picador, Iowa City, IA
9/22- Bottom Lounge, Chicago, IL
9/23- Grog Shop, Cleveland, OH
9/24- Club Cafe, Pittsburgh, PA
9/25- Arlene’s Grocery, NY, NY
9/26- Union Hall, NY, NY
9/27- Talking Head, Baltimore, MD
9/28- T.T. The Bear’s Place, Cambridge, MA
9/30- Black Cat (Backstage), Washington, DC
10/2- The Fire, Philadelphia, PA
10/3- Gravity Lounge, Charlottesville, VA
10/4- Tin Roof, Charleston, SC
10/5- Pirate’s Cove, Myrtle Beach, SC
10/7- Smith’s Olde Bar, Atlanta, GA
10/9- 40 Watt Club, Athens, GA
10/10- The Nick, Birmingham, AL
10/11- The End, Nashville, TN
10/12- Young Avenue Deli, Memphis, TN
10/17- Opolis, Norman, OK
10/18- Bluebird Theater, Denver, CO
10/24- The Whole Music Club, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN
10/25- The Cave, Carleton College, Northfield, MN
10/29- The Turf Club, St. Paul, MN
10/30- University of Wisconsin, Stout, Menomonie, WI
10/31- The Duck Room, St. Louis, MO

Fat Planet, one of the embryonic bands of the Elephant 6 collective, made their first post-high school reunion at Little Kings at the 2008 Athens Popfest. Robert Schneider, Bill Doss, and Will Cullen Hart were joined by Pete Erchick (Pipes You See, Pipes You Don’t) and Charlie Johnston (63 Crayons) for an intimate, lively performance. See Rich’s post at Cable & Tweed for the full story; he’s also provided the below videos of the band performing Robert’s old tune “Warm Milk and Chocolate” (the first video is the introduction, the second the song). For photos (like the one above), see Daniella’s/quixoticgoat’s Popfest Flickr set here.

Here’s another video shot by Chad Patio from the first concert of The Apples in Stereo’s New Magnetic Wonder tour – the band performs “Open Eyes”: