Austin Sound

Jacob Green has a touch of the synaesthesia. He is a music maker with a visual mind, and light and color bleeds into melody and timbre whenever he sets out to create.

Green is a local musician and composer, a member of experimental ensembles Brekekekexkoaxkoax and Austin New Music Co-op, and a tender of records at End of an Ear. Sunday night, July 27, at the Salvage Vanguard Theater, the Church of the Friendly Ghost presented a program of improvised projections and sound according to Green’s creative direction and vision.

Hello Lovers is one of the most unique groups in Austin. Behind John King’s volatile, swooning moans that pitch in gritty, operatic swells atop lush strings, Hello Lovers melds Antony’s passionate croon with Scott Walker’s dark orchestral visions, cut with a southern flair. Last year’s debut EP, Vanity Fair, was an unsettling yet graceful baroque construction, and their new full-length, Gone With the Wind, proves even more impressive as the group has come together into a dramatic force of strings and piano. Hello Lovers will be releasing the CD this Thursday, July 17 at the Mohawk, and we spoke to the band about the origins of their stunning sound and the making of the new album.

To get the “inside scoop,” as we professional reporters say, on the new Sunset album The Glowing City (which is due July 15th on Autobus Records) I emailed Bill Baird asking him if he wouldn’t mind talking about it with me. He agreed, and suggested we do the interview on Google Chat. Unsure of which emoticons most accurately reflected the professional aura of seriousness I maintain when conducting all my interviews, I was at first hesitant, but reluctantly assented. So late one night, after we had each returned home from work (and made a stop by the refrigerator), Bill Baird and I met in “cyberspace” to talk about the two latest Sunset albums, Baird’s lyrical influences, thunderstorms and more. What resulted was, naturally, something of a disaster.

This month, the Charles Potts Magic Windmill band released their sophomore LP, The Golden Calves. Like most of their work, The Golden Calves carries a biting wit that balances the narratives between irony and sincerity, emphasized by the group’s impressively tight, dead-pan harmonies. With the now-sextet adding drums and more power to their live sound, the Windmill Band expertly pushes boundaries of both genre and taste with their famously self-described “New York City style experimental country.” We spoke with Windmill Band founders Dirk Michener and Travis Catsull for an expectedly tongue-in-cheek explanation of their sound, the band’s origins, the organization of Business Deal Records, and the wonders of sleeping in ditches and cars.

This Thursday, Shearwater unveils their new album, Rook, at the Parish in a special show featuring a mini orchestra and video projections. The group’s official debut on Matador, which will be released next week, is Shearwater’s most impressive effort to date, harnessing both the crescendoing power and subtle beauty of Jonathan Meiburg’s songwriting and vocal range. We spoke with Meiburg about the upcoming show and album, as well as his recent decision to leave Okkervil River, the preponderancies of modern geography, and the fact that “there’s nothing worse than the sad cello.”

Aliens is perhaps the most unique band in Austin, at least in terms of not quite fitting in with the “scene,” so it is somewhat ironic that Aliens and Misc. Music mastermind Blake Sandberg and I are sitting in the interview capital of the city - Spider House. Since moving to Austin from New York, Sandberg has started the Misc. Music label, which boasts such extraordinary and off kilter talents as Daniel Johnston, Jad Fair, and, of course, Aliens, who recently released their excellent debut LP, Head First. Crammed into a secluded booth in a corner of the coffee house, Sandberg shares his ideas on the nature of “genre labels,” the exclusivity of “the Austin sound,” radio commercials and, most importantly, Aliens.

An Austin Sound favorite, Leatherbag unveils his fourth album, Love and Harm, on Thursday, April 17, at the Cactus Cafe. The Houston expatriate has been combining his vision of integrity and American folk with whatever he finds in other musical realms. With a slight, Texan drawl that just embodies the good old Americanism that’s so tough to easily find in music, Leatherbag (aka Randy Reynolds) met with Abhinav Kumar, whose radio show, Tons of Fun, you can tune in every Thursday evening from 8:00-8:30pm on KVRX 91.7FM. Leatherbag will be live and in-studio on Tons of Fun on this Thursday, April 10. You can also download “Stand Close,” an exclusive outtake from the new album here.

This weekend, the Black Angels headline the first Austin Psych Fest at the Red Barn, and event that frontman Christian Bland has long wanted to organize. Since the release of Passover in 2006, the sextet have become the premier representatives of Austin’s resurgent psych scene, which includes many of the bands lined up for Saturday’s fest like Ringo Deathstarr, Horse + Donkey, and the Strange Boys. The Fest also serves as the christening for the new venue/art space, the Red Barn, which we expect will become the center of many more fantastic events to come. Also on the horizon for the Black Angels is their new album, Directions to See a Ghosts, due out in May on the awesome Seattle imprint Light in the Attic. We spoke with Bland about the Fest, the new album, and exactly what the relationship is between the Viet Minh and Black Angels.

Last week, Haunting Oboe Music, who we had as our featured Sound Off artist way back in 2006, launched the first in their series of monthly EPs for 2008, titled “h.” If “h” is any indication, we can expect an impressive slew of music from the local sextet, and perhaps even an eventual “a-u-n-t-i-n-g-o-b-o-e”? HOM has always been progressive in the breadth of their sound, an ominous sweep that careens freely threw dark recesses, and the five songs on “h” display an impressively expansive flair and new directions shot off from their eponymous debut EP last year. Instrumental opener, “Behold, a Gremlin” winds through ferocious crests and troughs into the Radiohead-esque “Mano the Boy Soldier,” which the group has offered for download below. We’re going to be checking in with HOM each month as they work through the 12 EPs, seeing how the project is going and impacting the band throughout the year. They shot us back some typically hilarious replies to our email inquiries below, and you can catch HOM this Friday at Emo’s for the release of January’s EP alongside Ume, Camp X-Ray, and Prayer for Animals.

When Silent Land Time Machine first began creating music in his room, he had no idea how receptive Austin would be to his style. After a long journey of teaching himself to play a variety of instruments and recording full-length tracks, SLTM has recently joined the live music scene. He employs found sound, violin, guitar, drums, accordion – and anything else he can get his hands on – to create a musically layered sound. A little bit of sad mixed with some upbeat, SLTM brings a tasteful, electronic personality into the shoegaze genre. His first album, & Hope Still, is scheduled for release in spring 2008. The often-bearded man was gracious enough to discuss his beginnings and philosophy with Abhinav Kumar, whose radio show, Tons of Fun, you can tune in every Thursday evening from 8:00-8:30pm on KVRX 91.7FM. Silent Land Time Machine headlines at Emo’s this Tuesday, January 29 with The Tiny Tin Hearts and Hey La La.