Bling Ring Soundtrack Releases June 11

Sofia Coppola’s newest film, The Bling Ring, isn’t set to release until June 14^th, but the soundtrack comes out on the 11^th. And considering it’s packed with notable artists like Kanye, Frank Ocean, Lil Wayne, deadmau5, Phoenix, and more, it should be worth a listen.

Daniel Lopatin, who is also known as the “synth experimentalist” Oneohtrix Point Never, scored the film. He also worked alongside Brian Reitzell, who has worked with Sofia Coppola before and served as the film’s executive soundtrack producer and music supervisor. The end result of Lopatin’s and Reitzell’s collaboration is a diverse soundtrack full-up with rap, krautrock, and alternative music. Lopatin, AKA Oneohtrix Point Never, also has a featured song on the album, called “Ouroboros.”

Lopatin also helped found the new music label, “Software,” which is the third member of the Kemado family. Andres Santo Domingo and Tom Clapp founded Kemado in 2002, and just six years following that, sister label “Mexican Summer” was born. While Kemado focuses mainly on different styles of rock music, Mexican Summer is geared toward independent artists and releases digital and vinyl albums. Software will be for electronic music like digi-psych, Contemplative Dance Music, and “popular noise,” as Lopatin calls it.

The Bling Ring soundtrack isn’t the first time that Lopatin and Reitzell have worked together. Together, they produced music for the TV show, “Boss,” which starred Kelsey Grammar. Reitzell’s other projects include Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, Lost in Translation, and The Virgin Suicides.

The film is both written and directed by Sofia Coppola. It is based on the true story of a group of teenagers in Los Angeles who robbed the homes of celebrities, such as Paris Hilton, Orlando Bloom, and Lindsay Lohan. The teens stole millions’ worth of clothing, bags, jewelry, heirlooms, and more.

Best Coast Talks Dad Rock at Co-Op 87

Best Coast has had a good three years. The band was formed by Bethany Cosentino and Bob Bruno just three years ago, and now the surf-pop/garage rock band is opening for acts like Green Day. The duo is currently on tour with Green Day for their rescheduled tour, and after that ends they’ll set off on their own for some smaller venue performances.

Signed on with Mexican Summer Records, it seemed appropriate when Best Coast were interviewed for Pitchfork.tv at Co-op 87, which was opened in 2009 by Andres Santo Domingo & Co.’s Kemado/Mexican Summer labels. It is one of Brooklyn’s top destinations for LP junkies, collectors, and music lovers.

In their interview with Pitchfork, Best Coast talked about what they call “dad rock” (AKA music your dad would rock out to). They went through some of their top dad rock bands, some of which they said had influenced their latest album. Leading lady Bethany Cosentino and her partner Bob Bruno flashed LPs from artists like The Doobie Brothers, The Eagles, Fleetwood Mack, Saturday Night Fever, America, The Beach Boys, and Bread.

Best Coast will be playing shows from New York to Los Angeles over the coming months, finishing up in early June. The tour will promote their 2012 The Only Place. As part of Record Store Day 2013, the band is also going to be releasing a new 7” on April 20^th that will feature two brand new recordings: “Fear of My Identity” and “Who Have I Become?”

Vietnam Returns With Album and Tour

After five years off the radar, Vietnam has once more returned to the music scene. They’ve got a new LP out, an A.merican D.ream, and kicked off their nationwide tour and record release on Thursday, February 28^th at the Mercury Lounge in New York, NY. For the next three months, the band will travel cross-country to play on their own and alongside other bands.

Michael Gerner is the creative head of the band and has assembled an entirely new ensemble for the new album. Reminiscent of Kings of Leon, Vietnam performs “apocalyptic street blues,” which combine Gerner’s vocals with uncommon instruments in rock—the violin and a moog to start with. The album is dark but not heavy, graceful in its sad symphony.

Vietnam has been with several record labels to date, including Vice Records, The Social Registry, Kemado Records, and now Mexican Summer. Their 2007 self-titled debut LP with Andres Santo Domingo’s Kemado Records was critically acclaimed, and was the last record before Gerner’s five-year hiatus. Now Vietnam is signed on with Mexican Summer, which was founded by Kemado in 2008.

The new album is a collaboration between Gerner and guitarist Nathaniel “Lefty” Maynard, who worked to get Gerner back to Brooklyn for over three years after he had moved to LA to work on analog soundscapes.

“We put all of our budget into recording the record,” said Gerner. “It just didn’t leave us with any money.”

With less than a month to the release date and tour kickoff, Gerner started a KicStarter fundraising drive to earn enough money to take the band on tour. In just four days, they had raised about $5,000, which they say will be enough to pay for a van, gas, and some food rations for the band while they tour for the first few weeks. They’ll avoid hotels as much as possible and hopefully manage to make it through the whole tour before running out of cash.

The musicians are all nervous about the tour, but they are all excited as well. “I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever been a part of,” said Gerner. “I’m super proud of the record.”

Kemado, Cult, and Kanine Partner with Essential Music & Marketing

Essential Music & Marketing is helping indie artists and labels expand their international reach. The group has made a deal with seven label groups in hopes of expanding the successes they saw last year, when 14 of the distributor’s releases made their way to the United Kingdom’s Top 40 list. The new labels include Kemado Label Group, Cult Records, Kanine Records, FatCat, Loose, Lex, and Nettwerk Records.

Kemado Label Group was founded by Andres Santo Domingo and Tom Clapp, is one of the groups that will be partnering with Essential Music & Marketing. The label group includes Kemado Records, Mexican Summer and Software. Kemado’s artists include Call of the Wild, The Sword, Moab, Wild Hunt, and others. For more information on Andres Santo Domingo, check out our profile of him here.

Cult Records was started by Julian Casablancas, frontman for The Strokes. The label made its first signing in late November 2012 with the NYC band “The Virgins.” The significantly more established Kanine Records will also be signing on with Essential Music & Marketing for distribution in the UK and Europe. Based in Willamsburg, Brooklyn, the label was started in 2002 by Lio and Kay Kanine and includes artists like Eternal Summers, Grizzly Bear, and Surfer Blood.

Essential Music & Marketing began in 2003 to provide labels and artists with digital and physical distribution services and packages, offering project management, marketing, and sales. They are based out of the UK and have made deals with a number of labels, including Black Hole Recordings, Pink Mist, R&S Records, and many more. This newest addition of seven labels to its repertoire brings total representation up to 24 labels.

Indie Music Moving to Mainstream

The movement of indie music to mainstream music has been happening for quite some time. Back in the mid 2000s, underground bands not previously known to mainstream music listeners suddenly found themselves being discovered---for better or worse. The rise of the Internet made it easy to find out about new bands, whether or not they were being played on FM radio stations. TV shows, movies, and businesses started to take notice, and soon some indie bands saw record sales and downloads of their music.

Joan Hiller, who was once a publicist at Sub Pop Records, put it this way: “It was definitely weird a few years ago when it no longer became strange to see your friends on television, or to be in Nordstrom looking for underpants and hearing your friends’ bands getting played.”

But moving from indie to mainstream can present problems for some artists dedicated to the indie ideal. Whereas mainstream music is often criticized for producing music for money, indie music prides itself for creating music that values artistic interest over commercial viability. In other words, these musicians aren’t in it for the money.

One aspect of indie music that’s not often pursued by mainstream labels like Sony is the release of music on LPs. Only a few labels still produce LPs for their artists.  One of these is Brooklyn’s Kemado Records, co-founded by Andres Santo Domingo.*

“I think that vinyl in a way represents slow,” he says of LPs. “And I think that’s something that’s attractive about it maybe on a subliminal level for consumers that are maybe on the internet, to get something that’s really physical, maybe archaic in a way, but the complete antithesis of what the speed of consuming music on the Internet is.”

And it’s not just consumers that like LPs; it’s the musicians, too. “I always have said… that I’ll never really feel like a real band until I can hold a record in my hands and look at it,” saidJenn Wasner of Wye Oak, who recently released their third album digitally, onCD, and as a vinyl LP.

For indie musicians finding themselves in the spotlight, there are both positive and negative aspects. While they may suddenly have more than enough money to get by, there’s also more pressure than ever to focus on their creative expression rather than what FM listeners might want to hear. But these artists are also seasoned from their time underground, which likely means they already know where they want to go with their music—and it has nothing to do with how many people listen to it.

*We have written about vinyl records and Andres Santo Domingo before.  

The Sword’s Poetic Imagery

A song doesn’t have to be a soft, slow lyrical to have some good poetic imagery. In fact, in The Sword’s case, even head-banging music can have some powerful lyrics. The group recently released their latest album, Apocryphon, and they’re at their highest level of success yet. They’ve gone on tour with Metallica and been on stage with the likes of Motorhead and Ozzy Osbourne. Their music has even been used in Guitar Hero and movies like Jennifer’s Body.

And their acclaim from Rolling Stone, Outburn, and The Washington Post adds to their growing success. The group, from Austin, Texas, is a four-man set. They have released four albums thus far through Andres Santo Domingo’s Kemado Records and Cliff Chenfeld’s Razor & Tie.

The group is currently on a European tour, which will last through the end of January. Their last album was based completely on a science fiction narrative written by front man John Cronise. In it, he focused on concepts of light versus dark and the perception of time.

Their newest album has an altogether different sound, taking the band a bit further from doom metal and closer to traditional hard rock. Yet it is still as hard-hitting as ever, even with some of the restructuring that’s taken place (their drummer, Trivett Wingo left after the release of their last album).

The album still has some of its science fiction feel, but the stories have become more personal. “In a way, I realized music was a vessel for expressing my own views and thoughts,” said Cronise. “I shied away from that before in favor of entertaining people with colorful narratives. This is where I’m at.” The new album is somewhere in between the two, more raw than past albums, and full of big riffs and gritty songs.

“Set adrift in the multiverse / By the whims of fate / In thrall to the demiurge / We all await escape,” begins the last song of the new album, and the one for which it is named: “Apocryphon.” Sacrificing none of its usual darkness, The Sword’s newest lyrics have something that speaks to all.

See our previous profile on Andres Santo Domingo and Kemado Records.