Optical Atlas

Today Orange Twin artist Madeline kicks off a tour which will guide her throughout the South and Southwest, in conjunction with the vinyl and digital release of the Madeline Tour EP, to be released by Orange Twin Records on March 4th. The EP, previously a tour-only release (as you probably figured out for yourself), features appearances by members of Architecture in Helsinki and Mt. Eerie. A sampling, as well as tour dates, follow:

Madeline – I Waited All Day

Madeline Tour Dates

2/26 – Gainesville, Fl. @ The Atlantic
2/27 – Tallahassee, Fl. @ Fresh Face Fest
3/4 – Athens, Ga. @ Little Kings
3/5 – Birmingham, Al. @ Spring Street Fire House (7 p.m. All ages)
3/7 – Pensacola, Fl. @ Sluggo’s
3/8 – Baton Rouge, La. @ All Ages outdoor Party
(email andytgibbs@gmail.com for more info)
3/9 – Denton, Texas @ Rubber Gloves
3/10 – Dallas, Texas @ The Amsterdam Bar w/ Little Birds
3/11 – Austin, Texas @ Momo’s w/ Geoff Reacher (All Ages)
3/12 – Lafayette, La. @ Artmosphere
3/13 – New Orleans, La. @ AllWays Lounge

A few years back Fred Schneider of Athens legends The B-52’s launched The Superions with Noah Brodie and Dan Marshall. Following the release of digital singles in 2008 and in 2009, the band will be releasing their first EP on Happy Happy Birthday to Me Records on February 23rd in CD and 12″ formats. The Superions EP will feature the hit dance-inducing tracks “Totally Nude Island,” “Those Sexy Saucer Gals,” and “Who Threw That Ham at Me,” including remixes by Casper & the Cookies, Marshmallow Coast, The Lolligags, and Ursula 1000. Pre-order now at HHBTM’s website and you can elect to get the LP, CD, a keychain, button, autographed sleeve, and answering machine message (for those who still have answering machines), in various combinations – but hurry as the pre-order is only good until Monday at midnight. Here’s the video for “Who Threw That Ham at Me”:

Check out The Superions on MySpace for more videos and streaming music!

The Apples in Stereo’s latest album, Travellers Through Space and Time, will be released by Yep Roc/Simian/Elephant 6 on April 20th.  In April & May, the band will be hitting the road in support of the album, accompanied by friends The Generationals (from New Orleans) and Laminated Cat (from Athens, and the young psych masters who recently released Umbrella Weather on Garden Gate Records). Below are the dates, along with the complete press release for the album.

04.16.10 Lexington, KY @ Cosmic Charlie’s
04.17.10 Morgantown, WV @ 123 Pleasant Street
04.18.10 Washington, DC @ The Rock and Roll Hotel
04.20.10 Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s
04.21.10 New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom
04.23.10 Cambridge, MA @ Middle East Underground
04.24.10 Ithaca, NY @ Castaways
04.25.10 Rochester, NY @ Bug Jar
04.27.10 Cleveland, OH @ Grog Shop
04.28.10 Pontiac, MI @ The Pike Room
04.30.10 Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall
05.01.10 St. Paul, MN @ Turf Club
05.03.10 Milwaukee, WI @ Turner Hall
05.04.10 St. Louis, MO @ Billiken Club

Travellers in Space and Time,
by The Apples in Stereo

1. The Code
2. Dream About the Future
3. Hey Elevator
4. Strange Solar System
5. Dance Floor
6. C.P.U.
7. No One in the World
8. Dignified Dignitary
9. No Vacation
10. Told You Once
11. It’s All Right
12. Next Year at About the Same Time
13. Floating in Space
14. Nobody But You
15. Wings Away
16. Time Pilot

Studio-obsessed indie rockers The Apples in stereo are celebrating the start of a new decade with the release of their seventh studio album, Travellers in Space and Time, their most hi-fi and hook-laden production to date. Described by frontman Robert Schneider as “retro-futuristic super-pop,” the album is the official follow-up to 2007’s New Magnetic Wonder, and the band’s second studio release for Elijah Wood’s Simian Records. The album will be released on April 20 via Yep Roc/Simian/Elephant 6.

Travellers contains sixteen piano-driven tracks, bubbling over with vocoder harmonies and sci-fi sound effects, like 70’s AM radio filtered through a UFO; including the robotic first single “Dance Floor”, the four-on-the-floor dream-scape “Hey Elevator”, the Hall and Oates-tinged “Told You Once”, and the epic, yearning “Dream About The Future,” among many instant hits. The musical theme heard in these songs is strung throughout Travellers: intense pop hooks and electronic sounds, mixed with a pumping, get-up-and-moonwalk beat.

“I wanted to make a futuristic pop record, to reach out to the kids of the future,” Schneider relates. “It is what I imagine their more highly-evolved pop might sound like: shiny soul music with robots and humans singing together, yet informed by the music of our time. So we are sending a pop music message through time, hoping they will decode it and be into it.”

It is the first studio album from The Apples in stereo to feature new drummer John Dufilho, lead singer of Dallas indie rockers The Deathray Davies; and sees Bill Doss (Olivia Tremor Control, Elephant 6) and John Ferguson (Ulysses, Big Fresh), longtime Schneider collaborators, as full-time keyboardists in the band, alongside veteran members John Hill (guitar) and Eric Allen (bass). Original drummer Hilarie Sidney left the band in 2006.

Anyone familiar with The Apples in stereo’s career will know Schneider’s ever-evolving production process is as intricate as the recordings he generates. Engaging the same primary engineering team used to record New Magnetic Wonder, most notably Bryce Goggin (Trout Recording’s vintage recording wizard), as well as many studio-savvy friends and cohorts, the band spent well over a year in the studio recasting their signature pop sounds in chrome-plated futurism, all while adding a dance-driven vibe channeling ELO, Barry Gibb, Wild Honey-era Beach Boys and Off The Wall-era Michael Jackson.

With Travellers in Space and Time, Schneider continues experimenting with his recent invention, the Non-Pythagorean musical scale based on the logarithm, a mathematical function. Schneider is a passionate student of mathematics, and recently composed music based on prime numbers for a play written by world-class mathematician Andrew Granville, performed at the hallowed Institute for Advanced Study (home of Albert Einstein) in Princeton, New Jersey. Travellers includes “C.P.U.,” the first pop song ever to incorporate this novel scale.

In addition, the album features songwriting contributions from all of the other Apples, including “Wings Away” (Bill Doss/John Ferguson), “Next Year At About The Same Time” (Eric Allen), “No Vacation” (John Ferguson/Robert Schneider), “Floating Away” (John Dufilho), and “Dignified Dignitary” (Robert Schneider/Bill Doss/John Hill).

The 2007 hit album, New Magnetic Wonder, spawned late night performances on Conan and Colbert, commercial placements for The Apples‘ music (Pepsi, New Balance, Samsung, and numerous others), invitations to perform at many prestigious festivals and venues (All Tomorrows Parties, Pitchfork, Primavera Sound, R.E.M. Charity Tribute Concert at Carnegie Hall), and a world tour that took the band as far away as Taiwan – not to mention a polished performance of their hit song “Energy” by the contestants on American Idol.

Since then, the band has been increasingly busy, gaining ownership of their spinART Records back catalog and readying the albums for re-release, compiling the best-of #1 Hits Explosion, and releasing Electronic Projects for Musicians, an album of rarities. Schneider also made his children’s music debut with 2009’s Robbert Bobbert and the Bubble Machine (Little Monster Records), which made it to many Year-End Best Of lists; made numerous mathematics convention appearances; released Buddha Electrostorm (Garden Gate Records), an album of lo-fi garage-psych recorded with his brother-in-law Craig Morris (who played and engineered on Travellers) under the name Thee American Revolution; and topped it all off with his featured keynote talk and Australian debut performance at the Big Sound Music Conference, where he was featured alongside many musical luminaries, including noted Brian Wilson collaborator (and one of Schneider’s heroes), Van Dyke Parks… and all of this while hard at work on The Apples‘ most ambitious studio production yet.

First of all, if you haven’t done so already, head over to Merge Records and preorder the Chris Knox tribute album Stroke (due out in physical form on Feb. 23).  But somewhat overlooked in all the (deserved) hullabaloo over Jeff Mangum’s contribution to the album is the fact that it also marks the debut of a new project by he of The Olivia Tremor Control and The Sunshine Fix, Bill Doss.  Note that it’s been five years (almost six) since Bill released a record, although he has been recording steadily in the interim, and assisting friends like The Apples in Stereo (of which he’s a member), Circulatory System, Thee American Revolution, and Fabulous Bird, as well as participating in last year’s Elephant 6 Holiday Surprise Tour.  Now he’s back with Red&Zeke, first with the Tall Dwarfs cover “Bodies” on the Stroke album, and soon with a full-length.

Bill writes Optical Atlas, “I have teamed up with my old friend Neil Cleary, a musician currently residing in Boston, who has not only done some damn fine solo work but also played drums in The Essex Green as well as having been in The Sunshine Fix from time to time, to form Red&Zeke.  Neil and I share an affinity for Appalachian music and have been long-jawing for quite some time about making such a record. So, earlier this year, he came to Athens where we recorded a batch of cover tunes, exploring a mix of the modern and traditional, all in the Appalachian style. The bones of the songs were played and sung live and tracked at Bel-Air Studios a la Jason NeSmith, of Casper and the Cookies fame, with minimal overdubs added afterward. By chance, we happened to cover the song ‘Bodies’ by the aforementioned Mr. Knox. We finished with the mixing and mastering, fortunately just in time to make the Stroke LP, and hope to have our record, tentatively titled Old Man From Indie Rock Mountain, released in the Spring of 2010.”

One can assume Bill is “Red.”  (’Burns would have been a good nickname too.)  I’ll give more details as they arrive, but here’s one to look forward to in the new year.

In June of this year, Chris Knox of the Tall Dwarfs–a major influence upon the Elephant 6 Collective, with selections of their discography reissued via Cloud Recordings–suffered a debilitating stroke.  During the summer it was announced that Jeff Mangum agreed to contribute to the in-the-works tribute album, and one of my sources confirmed that Olivia Tremor Control were likely a “yes” as well.  The Chris Knox blog has now announced the track listing for the 2-CD tribute album, called Stroke – Songs for Chris Knox, and neither a Neutral Milk nor an Olivia Tremor is anywhere in sight.  That’s the bad news.  The good news is that it’s still an excellent lineup.  Check it out here.

Nana Grizol’s much-anticipated second album, Ruth, has a CD and LP release date of January 12th from Orange Twin Records, but it appears that you can download it now from iTunes and Amazon.com, if physical media are not so important to you.  Thanks to Scott for the tip.

You can also read an interview with Nana Grizol’s Theo Hilton at T.O. Snob’s Music.

Mike Turner of Happy Happy Birthday to Me Records has posted more news regarding the Marshmallow Coast reissues I mentioned a couple weeks back – it sounds like they’ll be coming sooner than previously thought, albeit digitally:

It’s been a pretty busy couple of weeks for Marshmallow Coast and HHBTM. In the next few weeks you’ll be able to download Seniors & Juniors, [Marshmallow] Coasting + bonus tracks, and Times Square + bonus tracks from Itunes, Emusic, or your favorite download service. Andy is also in the middle of recording Super Seniors & Juniors which is a re-recording and updating of the album that many consider to be his best. This time around it’s going to feature lots of guests, and will sound a bit more like Andy’s newest album Phreak Phantasy. This record will be on CD/LP in mid-2010. After that we’ll start issuing all the older Marshmallow Coast catalog on vinyl.

Thanks to Jezebel for the link.

Orange Twin Records has posted details for Ruth, the sophomore album from Nana Grizol, to be released on January 12.  (Thanks to David for the link.)  I’ve also updated their upcoming tour dates below.

Ruth,
by Nana Grizol
1. Cynicism
2. Galaxies
3. Blackbox
4. Atoms
5. Gave On
6. Grady and Dubose
7. From Here
8. Alice and Gertrude
9. Arthur Hall
10. For Things that Haven’t Come Yet
11. Sands

Tour Dates:

10.23.09 Athens, GA @ Go Bar
11.04.09 Chapel Hill, NC @ NightLight
11.05.09 Saint Mary’s City, MD @ Saint Mary’s College
11.06.09 Washington, DC @ TBA
11.07.09 Purchase, NY @ SUNY Purchase
11.08.09 New York, NY @ Cakeshop
11.09.09 Hamden, CT @ The Space
11.10.09 Portland, ME @ Apohedion
11.11.09 Brattleboro, VT @ TBA
11.12.09 Toronto, ONTARIO @ The Dakota
11.14.09 Geneseo, NY @ barn show – TBA
11.16.09 Detroit, MI @ The Trumbullplex
11.17.09 Chicago, IL @ Empty Bottle
11.18.09 Madison, WI @ house show – TBA
11.19.09 Minneapolis, MN @ Hexagon Bar
12.03.09 Athens, GA @ Caledonia Lounge