Thursday, March 31, 2011

New Terese Taylor videos up!

We have some new movies of Terese Taylor from the El Rio on Oct. 28, 2010. We caught Terese and her bandmates working out some new material, resulting in some fresh performances. Dig it:



And another. "Mental health, yeah!"

Monday, March 21, 2011

Let's get the hell out of Flatland

The late, great Carl Sagan on dimensions. Wanna see what a shadow of a four-dimensional object looks like? Watch.

the sights and sounds of Madame P

Madame P and her machines play the Undisclosed Location a few years ago, captured by our cameras.

The bad one

Video montage by an old friend. Sleater-Kinney juxtaposed with the tsunami.

Friday, March 18, 2011

Talking sense to deaf ears

"Oh that crazy fringe politician Dennis Kucinich! Why can't he be pragmatic and reach across the aisle like all the NICE Democrats?"

Meanwhile the "nice" Democrats continue to capitulate. At least Dennis has the guts to call them on the carpet for what they sat on their hands and allowed to happen in 2003.

If we make it out of this disgusting period of history, our great grandchildren will be screaming "What was WRONG with those idiots? He was the only one of them talking any sense at all!"

Watch the video. The man's on fire!

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

The Content Providers at their most populous...

Neo looks so cute here! This was a fun, but short lived line-up of The Content Providers. All great players... all in transition...


Saturday, March 12, 2011

A small facelift

We just updated our homepage and made a few changes. We kept the listening stations for the X-tal archives but the links for our most recent releases go directly to the iTunes pages. We encourage our friends to follow the links and explore the music. Every time you preview a song, we get a few pennies in our coffers, which helps us survive in this brutal capitalist world.

And of course, we'd love it if you bought an mp3 or a CD. The music still sounds good. Check out that new Experimental Bunnies album.

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Wanna balance the budget?

It's not hard. Really, it's not.

Thank you, John Darnielle

The Mountain Goats have never been known for agitprop, but John's always been a conscious guy, and a remake of this classic anthem has never been more timely. (Hat-tip to Truculent & Unreliable for helping put this one out there.)

Power In A Union from JD on Vimeo.

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Ear Candle Radio's Top 20, February 2011

A lot of songs carried over from the previous month's top 20, but pole-vaulting to the top is something new and beautiful:

The number one song on this month's chart is unique in that it features no humans contributing to the music. And by that we don't mean it is a heavily-sequenced piece of electronica. Oh no, the Thai Elephant Orchestra is exactly what it says it is: original music composed and performed by actual elephants (lovingly assisted by their pet humans).



More empathy for the animal kingdom follows with the late Ari Up delivering the title track of the final Slits album, Trapped Animal. Donovan returns with his impression of Sunset Strip life circa 1966, Brighter Shades deliver the sound of young Baltimore, Tom Verlaine and Sonic Youth give us two extremes of exploratory New York guitar music, and Neil Young woos a beautiful dancer.

Some rare gems surface this month: Portland's Neo Boys offer up some reassuring words from their extremely out of print Crumbling Myths EP, Modmach (led by ex-Unit and current Winston Tong collaborator LX Rudis) serve up a tense, circular depiction of stress and escapism featuring some mad guitar from MX-80's Bruce Anderson, Northern California guitar virtuoso (and firm friend of the Ear Candle posse) Matthew Grasso offers up an original composition that pirouettes intricately around a single note, and Linda Smith shows up with another one of her calm, deliberately paced homemade pop masterworks.

We hear from spoken word guru Ken Nordine, lost genius songwriter Elliott Smith, the mighty Dirtbombs of Detroit, a cool instrumental from Chuck Berry, an evergreen psychedelic ballad by the Troggs, a trippy post-punk drone-rant from Public Image Ltd, Patti Smith and her snakecharming post-Coltrane clarinet, a lovelorn patient by the name of Gregory, and Brian Wilson surfin' with Gershwin.

Thank you dear comrades, and keep listening!

1. Thai Elephant Orchestra - Gentle Monsoon - Water Music
2. The Slits - Trapped Animal - Trapped Animal
3. Donovan - The Trip - Sunshine Superman
4. Brighter Shades - There's Nothing, Stranger - You Shine So Bright
5. Tom Verlaine - Days On The Mountain - Words From The Front
6. Sonic Youth - Silver Wax Lips - Silver Session
7. Neil Young - When You Dance I Can Really Love - After The Goldrush
8. Neo Boys - Nothing to Fear - Crumbling Myths
9. Modmach - Security - Modmach
10. Matthew Grasso - Contemplation On The Corpse - Past Present Future
11. Linda Smith - I'll Never See You Again - Nothing Else Matters
12. Ken Nordine - Reaching into In - The Best of Word Jazz, Vol. 1
13. Elliott Smith - Bled White - XO
14. The Dirtbombs - Start The Party - Dangerous Magical Noise
15. Chuck Berry - Deep Feeling (Instrumental) - After School Session
16. The Troggs - Love Is All Around - The Troggs' Greatest Hits
17. Public Image Ltd. - Flowers of Romance - The Flowers Of Romance
18. Patti Smith - Higher Learning - Land (1975-2002)
19. Gregory Isaacs - Love Is Overdue - Reggae Mix
20. Brian Wilson - They Can't Take That Away From Me - Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin