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In this episode, Natalie and Tara share "new to them" music that they've been loving. Share your latest music faves in our Discord channel!
Creators & Guests
What is Record Store Society?
It's time to visit your favorite local record store; a place where music fans spend countless hours flipping through records, discuss the minutia of favorite b-sides, best live albums, and anything else music-related. If you have any questions, you can always find Tara and Natalie behind the counter ready to give a recommendation or tell you about a recent discovery. Join Record Store Society, a music podcast, biweekly to see what’s new or just to hang around for some music talk.
Transcript generated by Podium.page
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NOTE: There were 3 speakers identified in this transcript. Podium recommends using "Find and Replace" to change the speaker label to the appropriate name. Speaker separation errors can arise when multiple speakers speak simultaneously.
0:00:08 - Tara
Hi Natalie,
0:00:23 - Natalie
hey Tara, how are you? I'm doing good. Happy belated birthday.
0:00:27 - Tara
Oh, I thank you so much. It's very good season, so I've already been making a lot of spreadsheets. Oh good, gotta start the year off, right, yeah, guess what? What? The Big Ears lineup was announced today. It's here. It's here, okay, do you tell? Well, so far, fridge is not on it, like I was thinking Maybe that could be cool, right, okay, and neither is Hosono. Oh, really Okay. But guess who? I'm not going to have any clue. Yeah, I'm going to be the big cock. Oh, shut up. Oh, that's dope. Yes, and Digeable Planets.
0:01:05 - Natalie
Oh my gosh. Okay, that's really cool. That's really cool. Shabaka Hutchings Yo stop. Okay, I need to pull this up right now, and this is a three day festival. Four days, yeah, four days. Oh my gosh, you're going to have such an awesome time.
0:01:21 - Tara
I'm so excited I got my tickets already. Sweet, but we you know, you and I we like to do our what's new to us every month. Well, I actually was hoping we could have a conversation about that today, because there is a new album from someone on this lineup that I think is a really good record and I'd love to talk about it.
0:01:44 - Natalie
Oh yeah, for sure, let's do that.
0:01:46 - Tara
Awesome.
0:01:48 - Natalie
Always like hearing about awesome new artists and records to listen to.
0:01:52 - Tara
Yeah, like learning about new stuff too, new music. Hi, welcome to the store. I'm Tara, I'm Natalie. Let us know if you need anything, we'll be over here chatting. So yeah, mark Robo and Ceramic Dog they're on the lineup for Big Years 2024. And I've seen them before at Big Years.
That's actually how I learned about Mark Robo is from Big Years and I learn about a ton of new stuff always every year at Big Years and that's why it's my favorite music festival. If you haven't heard about it, anyone in the store, if you haven't heard about Big Years which I'm sure if you're a regular at this store, you have heard me talk about this festival but it's experimental music, jazz, folk, classical, a lot of left of the dial stuff and I love it so much. It's not one of those festivals where you're sweating in a field or outside it's venue and then you walk to a venue and then you walk to another venue. Oh yeah, you just go back and forth. Nice, and, yeah, it's my favorite and it's in my hometown of Knoxville, tennessee. But so, yeah, I learned so much music always when I go in. It's a wonderful experience.
Mark Robo has played several times at Big Years music festival. He is an American guitarist and composer and he's kind of done a lot. He's done a lot with no Wave, but he plays no Wave, free Jazz, rock, cuban and he's collaborated with a ton of people Tom Waits, elvis Costello, john Zorn, diana Kroll, nico Case I mean he's worked with a ton, a ton, a ton of people really awesome people and all over the board too, just a lot of different folks, and he even was a session musician for Tom Waits on his album Rain Dogs. He's consistently mostly been the leader of Ceramic Dog, which is a power trio of music geniuses, and in July they just released their fifth LP and Mark Ribot calls it their best. Yet the new album covers so many genres, just like I think his career has Mark Ribot's career, and I mean there's a touch of just about everything in this album.
Yeah, so I mentioned my spreadsheet recently, my new album spreadsheet, where I've just been listing everything and just going through albums in full to give them a good chance to listen and kind of just see what's out there that I'm usually leaving out or forgetting or not knowing about. Well, I put this one on, I was vacuuming out my car and I was like man, this rocks, like this is because I remember seeing him and I don't remember it rocking very solidly. It wasn't Ceremic Dog when I saw him, it was just him and a guitar and maybe one other guy. But this record it rocks actually, but it starts out with a really strong rock track and then of course, the rest of the album is all over the place of different genres. There's rock and free jazz and Cubano and there's even a cover of that's Entertainment, the post-punk anthem, so. But this first rock track is also the album title track and it's called Connection. Let's hear it a little bit of that when you try and you try, but you live like a five-out to miss your connection. So yeah, that's Connection and I wanted to read a little bit of something that he wrote describes basically kind of where this song came from, and it's the album's first single, of course, entitled a track.
Like I mentioned, this song and the album's title began with a sculpture by our friend and ceramic dog basis Shazad Ismaili's daughter, annika, who's six years old. She had made a kind of house, made by sticking toothpicks into Halloween candies. It's an odd-shaped house, kind of like the frame of a geodesic dome. The little structure is home to a drawing of a smiling gingerbread man. Very homie, but, as we all know, it was the ginger man's problematic home that caused him to run away as fast as he can. And what struck us about this home, apart from its odd beauty, was the fragility of its toothpick design, in which Annika perfectly captured the fragility of our contemporary attempts at human connection. The shadow hanging over our post, everything, homes, everything else, the words and the beat, which music nerds take note lays a four-four drum beat on top of a three-four melody, came later. Thanks, annika. That is intense. I don't know.
So I didn't have that context when I first listened to the track. But now you do Take it, see how you feel. But I just thought that was a really cute story anyways and wanted to keep it or at least mention it. But yeah, so rock and track very alternative kind of 90s-esque, right. But to show more of a difference across the album, I also want to share a clip of this song, swan, which is kind of right in the center of the album.
Holy shit okay. So yeah, this one is totally different. This one lies more in their improvisational free jazz, more no-wave. I would say jazz meets noise, kind of banger that should only be listened to in headphones at a very loud volume, I would say. But I love this song. It's probably my favorite on the album. Yeah, it's just wild. And James Brandon Lewis contributes on saxophone for that song. I like that one. Yeah, that one's really good. Lastly, I'll mention the last track of the album, which is called Crumbia. It's a playful take on sort of dirty Latin music style Cumbia dance, favorite kind of Mexican flavor.
0:08:05 - Natalie
It's called Cumbia Crumbia.
0:08:07 - Tara
Oh, it's got an R in there.
0:08:08 - Natalie
Like a crumb. Yeah, Gotcha, gotcha. Okay, I think this one's my favorite so far Nice.
0:08:14 - Tara
That's it. I just wanted to highlight how broad this album goes. Last thing I'll add is something that Mark Ribot said about this album. He told a reporter that many of his current songs he once hoped other artists would record before he realized that they were much too weird, he said. He said I decided I might as well put them out myself, and that's what I'm in the process of trying to do now. Only, there are so many of them that it's been difficult to figure out how to put them together and I think he did a really good job of that. And I think you can hear just the mishmash and blend of different genres across all the songs and sometimes maybe that's not recommended, but I really enjoyed hearing all of the different flavors in this album.
0:09:01 - Natalie
Yeah, this, this Kroombia song. I'm fascinated by the bass that you get in Kroombia. I don't know what kind of effect he has on it, but it's kind of like kind of phased out and it's unsettling and kind of weird and I don't know. It's just a really neat effect. It makes you feel queasy, I don't know. Oh, yeah, I love that, but it's really cool.
0:09:22 - Tara
I can't wait to see him live at Big Ears next year. But I will say, if you're interested in learning more about Marker Boe, there was a biographical documentary made about him and it's called the Lost String. I haven't seen it, but I'm interested in checking it out now myself. Very cool.
0:09:40 - Natalie
I had never heard of him before.
0:09:42 - Tara
Oh really, yes, well, he's a legend, nice. But like I said, I didn't really know who he was until I was exposed to him at Big Ears several years ago.
0:09:51 - Natalie
Hmm, all right. So my first new artist is a producer singer-songwriter named Dijon, and he's very interesting. His sound is kind of a twist on like R&B Soul. That's just really really rough around the edges, a little crazy, a little melodramatic, definitely that bedroom pop vibe, some sprinkles of country music in there.
It's just this really bizarre, like surreal mishmash of things. He was featured on the Tonight Show last year, which is super cool, but I cannot deal with Jimmy Fallon so I missed it completely, but I did check it out on YouTube and his performances are super interesting. It's like he'll have all the musicians gathered around a dining table, kind of just vibing off each other, and beer bottles all over the place, you know cigarette butts or whatever and it's like you've walked into this random jam session at someone's grandma's house or something, and he's just like kind of shouting and crying out as if he's in actual pain, but it sounds good. It's like very raw, but controlled at the same time. So here's the first song I heard from Dijon. It's called Many Times. That's cool, yeah, yeah.
So this is off his 2021 debut studio album, absolutely, and he released two EPs before that. In 2019, he has one called Sci-Fi One, and then one in 2020 called how Do you Feel About Getting Married. But one song I really like on this latest studio album, though, is called God in Wilson, sensual. Yeah, it's a really smooth song, and his voice just sounds so pretty. I thought it was a romantic song at first, because it sounds like a turn the lights down low, kind of thing. Yeah, it does. It's not. It's actually an exploration of guilt and shame and it's about a priest and it's got like some religious themes in there. Yeah, so he jumps around a lot in topic and in style. He dropped a new track earlier this year called coogie.
0:12:18 - Speaker 3
Yeah.
0:12:21 - Natalie
Still very intense, very distressed, heavy twangy guitar, strange feedback sounds. Just a lot of maelstrom of emotions, you know. So I'm excited to go back and check out his earlier material, even before he went solo and was part of a duo with his high school friend called Abhidijan, just to kind of get that full picture of, like, how did we get here? You know, because my man's is deep, deep in his feelings. But yeah, dijon's cool, he's blown up and I think he's one to watch. That's cool.
0:12:53 - Tara
Yeah, I'll check him out as well. Nice, my next one. I don't want to say too much about this one because I think I would actually maybe consider doing an album of the month, maybe with this one because I enjoy it so much, but it's the new one from our girl, Tirzah. It's called trip9lovedotquestionmark, and we've definitely talked about Tirzah before in the store. Color grade was one of my favorites in 2021. It was more experimental. Her full length debut album, devotion, is that smooth indie pop sound. And then this one, trip9love, is sultry and intimate, still has that indie R&B pop sound, but it does feel a bit more intimate than, of course, the last one, which is a bit more experimental-esque. And, of course, all of these have been produced by Micah Levy, from Mika Chu and the Shapes, who Tirzah went to school with, which is really cool. And, yeah, and the new album has lots of piano and drum loops and the first track I want to highlight off the new record is called F22. It's the first song off the new album, so check it out, f22.
0:14:20 - Natalie
Yeah, I dig tears as voice.
0:14:22 - Tara
Yeah, so sultry and smoky and soft sounding smoky and soft. It can be smoky and soft, right, it can indeed. Yeah, f 22 is this like? Has this pulsing, grainy kind of drum sound and she's singing over it and it's really cool. I like it in. The same kind of sound continues to the next track as well. But the next song I want to highlight from this album is called their love. That's really pretty.
So pretty. Yeah, their love has a simple piano part and some echoey vocals that seem kind of reflective. One of the lines is some bridges burned and you know, and yeah, I just I think this is a kind of the opposite of that first song, so I wanted to highlight it. But I love this new album and, man, honestly, I've loved everything that tears that has released. So I can't wait to see how she continues to grow.
0:15:29 - Natalie
It sounds like the prepared piano sound is a theme in this album. Does it pop?
0:15:35 - Tara
up in most of the tracks it does. It's reoccurring, for sure.
0:15:38 - Natalie
Yeah, I like when people mess with the innards of a piano. You can do some cool sounds with that, yeah for sure. All right, so this next one's kind of a two for one and you'll see why. So, this new artist for me, I'm so excited that I discovered her and I'm really late to the game because she's actually been out for a long time and is really, really popular. Her name is so Yoon. So, so Yoon is a singer, songwriter, guitarist out of Seoul, south Korea.
Now, way back in 2016, she formed a band called Se-Soon-Yong when she was just 18, and they do like indie, psychedelic rock, and they've been very, very successful, winning music awards in Korea, and they were chosen as one of Fender's 25 global artists to watch in 2020. And I really like their music. So I think the band, as well as her solo stuff that I'm going to talk about in a second, are both worth checking out, but they're very, very different. So it's hard to pick just one Se-Soon-Yong track because they're quite diverse, but let's try out the track Midnight Train from their 2020 EP Non-Adaptation. Yeah, I thought you might be into this particular track and, just for comparison, here's a track where they dip a toe into funk music. I really dig this one. This is from 2021 and it's called Joke.
This is her or just the band, still the band, still the band. They are versatile. Versatile. So Se-Soon-Yong they're still active, but from 2019. So you can also branched off into a solo career where she has adopted more of a hybrid contemporary R&B rock sound.
So YouTube served me this first song, I believe her latest video in my recommendations One of the few good decisions that algorithm has made on my behalf. It's for the song Smoke Sprite. So that's just SOYOON for Se-Soon, the hook in this track is really killer. That's the thing that made me stick around is the hook, for sure. Also, rm from BTS is featured on this track, which is quite the flex to have a high profile feature like that on your track. It's just very funky. There's a really good groove in the bass.
I love her vocals. It sounds like she's singing fully in her head voice, but she has so much support behind it that it sounds powerful and it can stand up to that rock music. But yeah, the hook is just gold. I was all in as soon as I heard it. It's off. Her latest album, released this year called Episode One, love, and she's just so versatile. I mean again, it's hard to pick another song for contrast because she musically covers so much ground, but here's more of a straight R&B soul track from her first self-titled debut album. The track is Noonwalk.
0:18:59 - Tara
This one has more of a Tawate. Lean on it, I feel like, yeah, I can hear that the little dings and what not.
0:19:06 - Natalie
Mm-hmm, yeah, but she's making lots of great, really creative music. I noticed too she's got commentary versions of her solo albums on Spotify that might be interesting, so I might check those out. She's all over the place. She played South by Southwest last year. She's currently on a world tour with the band Seisun Young and they're in the States this month actually, but there's no Atlanta show, sadly, so maybe one day I'll be able to catch them.
0:19:30 - Tara
Yeah, I mean I saw that she has like one million or so monthly listeners on Spotify, but that Smoke Sprite song has over 55 million listeners.
0:19:43 - Natalie
Yeah, that single is massive.
0:19:45 - Tara
Yeah, definitely doesn't hurt to have the BTS guy on there, for sure.
0:19:48 - Natalie
I know right, awesome.
0:19:51 - Tara
So the next one for me is an old one, but I'd never heard of them until just the other day. I'm in part of in like a music league thing and there was Hawaii theme Hawaii born singer or songwriter people in the band was the theme and this band was a submission. They're called Kalapana and the song in particular that I really enjoyed is called the Hurt.
0:20:18 - Speaker 3
Oh, my friends are laughing, Seeing you out with other men. I'm dying.
0:20:27 - Natalie
That's a vibe I love it.
0:20:28 - Tara
Yeah, it's so good, right. So this song is from their album Kalapana One, which was released in 1975. And Kalapana when they got together, they became a regular band at this Honolulu club called the Top Aida Shop and they opened shows for Earth, wind and Fire, the Moody Blues, sly and the Family Stone and then in 1975 released their debut self-titled album, which is this one, the Kalapana One, because they released several more after. So now it is not just Kalapana but Kalapana One, and it features Jackie Kelso on Saxon Flute, bill Perry on bass, larry Brown on drums, and it was a huge success in Hawaii and Japan. And they released a few more albums after that than paused for separate projects and then released a comeback album in 1986 called Hurricane. But one of the original members, mackie Fury, was, after battling drugs and drug treatment programs and relapses, was sentenced to prison and then unfortunately unallied himself in 1999 in his jail cell.
The band has continued on post-Fury but and they have quite a huge discography at this point. But this Kalapana album is fabulous and I love it, and another great track on it is called Naturally They'd be. You'd think it is blue.
0:22:02 - Natalie
One with broken wings has gone forever.
0:22:06 - Tara
Very pretty, yeah, just a lovely feel good band from the 70s, you know from. Hawaii. Yeah, I just enjoyed this album and I was like, wow, this is really good.
0:22:19 - Natalie
Never heard of them before the opening of like a late 70s drama on TV where it's like the beachfront and there's people hang gliding and jet skiing, you know yeah, yeah, that's hilarious. Check it out nice, I like them that's it all, right.
0:22:36 - Tara
That's all I have, all right, well, you got one more.
0:22:39 - Natalie
I do, I've got one more okay, this one this one. I probably, I probably should have been aware of this sooner. But you know, whatever it's all good. So this is JID East Atlanta native.
Oh yeah so I'm like just now getting turned on to this rapper and singer through his tiny desk performance. Good old tiny desk, always delivering the gems right. Yeah, and I was verily entertained by this tiny desk. I mean the soulful, jazzy instrumentation, the vocals were tight, he had two great singers with him, just great production. The whole vibe was on point and JID has really really good live delivery, like he was just flowing. Every word was crisp, he was riding on the beat so you could like really plug into his storytelling. That tiny desk came out a few weeks prior to the release of his third studio album, the forever story, which came out in 2022, so a few of those tracks were featured.
0:23:44 - Speaker 3
Here is a bit of Sistah and him yeah, very cool yeah, it's a super interesting song, like he's.
0:23:50 - Natalie
He's very vulnerable. He talks about his relation, well, his lack of a relationship with his sister because she doesn't approve of his music career in the industry. So it's like this delicate and often painful balancing act between family and fame and I just appreciate his honesty. You know, like I think we're still, yeah, in that era of rap that's predominantly about getting money, getting hoes. So it's it's nice to hear another voice just reflect on relatable human relationship stuff. I mean, hoes still slip in every once in a while, but, you know, still he's talking about real shit and I like that. Some smooth vocals from James Blake in that hook as well. Also a sample from music soul child song merry go round and JID. His singing voice is really nice too. Here's a track called cody blue 31 cool yeah, solid vocals, right yeah yeah, it's got that old, old school throwback soul style.
Like you can tell. It's in his veins, you know. But yeah, he's been around for a minute. I'm slow, as per usual. He dropped a handful of mixtape since 2010 and in 2017 J Cole signed him to his label, dreamville records, and in print of interscope. In that same year he released an album called the never story and then the following year he released another album called de caprio 2, but right now I'm still stuck on the forever story. It's pretty incredible. I also think I might we might revisit this one in the store for a longer conversation. It's really really good. Word on the street, aka the interwebs, says he's working on a joint collaborative album right now with producer metro boomen, so looking forward to that nice.
0:25:41 - Tara
So, being a dj in Atlanta and playing at a lot of different clubs throughout the years, I always wonder if I've come across any of these people in real life before. It's highly likely. I mean, I have seen some like obvious folks out, but like I don't know if I. You know, back then, when he was just getting started and he was in East Atlanta like what I don't know, if I, I would not have known who he was. So it would have been, I guess I would have had to follow his career from the very beginning. But yeah, I don't know. It's just always, uh, an interesting thought like who? The bike of a grass?
0:26:17 - Natalie
I wouldn't be shocked, though.
0:26:18 - Tara
Atlanta is weird like that it's yeah a big city but it's a small world right, you know totally, yeah, that's cool this one.
0:26:25 - Natalie
So those are a few of the new artists I've stumbled upon recently that I'm excited about yeah, these are great.
0:26:31 - Tara
I'm definitely gonna do some more exploration on them and have a bit more of a full listen. Yeah for sure listening experience, yeah, cool. Well, let's go back to work and alphabetize some of these used CDs. Do we have to?
0:26:49 - Natalie
let's keep talking about music. I know, I know we have a job to do.
0:26:54 - Tara
We want to keep our customers happy right, yeah we gotta learn some more stuff so we can have these wonderful conversations.
0:27:02 - Natalie
We can find some gems hidden in the the used bins oh yeah, I've already got a shortlist in the works for our next conversation, so lots of good stuff popping up, yeah nice can't wait.
0:27:14 - Tara
All right, well, I'll see you on the next aisle over.
0:27:18 - Natalie
Okay, I'll get back to work, okay, bye, bye, everybody okay.
0:27:38 - Speaker 3
Record store society is hosted by Natalie white and Tara Davies. If you'd like to contact the show, visit our website at recordstoresocietycom, or you can find us on all your favorite social media sites with the handle at record store society.
Transcribed by https://podium.page