Today's Hotness: Treasures Of Mexico, Hisoft, Tadoma

>> The folks at Shelflife Records can certainly pick a single, which are words we feel like we've written here before, but if that's true it only underscores that the label knows when it hears a hit. The most recent example is "Stars," the masterful and endlessly delightful preview track from the recently issued debut set Holding Pattern from The Treasures Of Mexico. The Chatham, England-based band is the songwriting vehicle of Mark Matthews, who is joined in The Treasures Of Mexico with his former The Dentists bandmate Bob Collins as well as drummer Russ Baxter (who, incidentally, also serves time detonating the cans for an act called Secret Affair). "Stars" is a Grade A guitar-pop gem with subtle vocal harmonies and tasteful synth support that will certainly strike a chord (ha) with fans of things excellent such as Teenage Fanclub's "Star Sign" (speaking of stars) or RIDE's "Taste." While the closing section of the song is all "yeah yeah yeahs" and bashes in an exhilarating way, The Treasures Of Mexico sound is perhaps not quite as aggressive and saturated as those aforementioned tunes, and all of the trio's Holding Pattern harkens, sonically, back to pre-grunge dynamics -- meaning the aggression never gets too aggressive, the distortions never completely white out the aural field. That more subdued dynamic is present across Holding Pattern -- even the uptempo, sugary rush of "Stars" is a bit of an outlier on the set -- but that allows the songs on the record to breathe in a very pleasing way that recalls The House Of Love or The Connells. Or, you know, The Dentists. The press materials from Shelflife indicate all of the former Dentists guys have new projects and collaborate in various combinations and to certain extents, so there is a lot of activity for fans to track. More germane to this conversation is the fact that a follow-up to Holding Pattern is already in the offing. For those unfamiliar, The Dentists were '80s greats responsible for such bangers as "Eyes" and the terrific LPs If All The Flies Were One Fly and Some People Are On The Pitch They Think It's All Over It Is Now. Holding Pattern was released by Shelflife June 2 as a digital download, which you can purchase right here.



>> We are compelled to recount the story of The Low Numbers and Hisoft on the rare occasion that there is a new (or sad) development, but those occasions have been exceedingly rare in the last decade, so let's re-cap. Back in the later '90s when we lived in Philadelphia, we were minding our own business one evening at a rock show at the then-relatively-new Balcony, which was and remains upstairs at The Trocadero. Opening or in the middle of a bill was a band that blew us away, a band that was having a perfect night, The Low Numbers, who had these incredible new wave-damaged, Tuetonic songs and a strong look. Information about the band was hard to come by, and then we moved away, and only through the magic of the Internets and a kind soul on MySpace were we able to eventually get our hands on some tracks and learn more about the band. Some of what we learned: members of The Low Numbers had a new combo called Hisoft, and that certain of these members had been in an iteration of our beloved Lilys in the early '00s, and then Hisoft released its awesome Amateur EP in 2006. And then... nothing. Nothing, that is, until now. A tip Thursday pointed us to the new Hisoft jam "State Police," which is embedded below, and which was posted to Soundcloud earlier this week. "State Police" carries all the trademarks of a great Hisoft jam: enticing melodies, smoothed-out vibes and fronter Gerhardt Koerner's even vocals. But the song is also a touch noisier and dense than the tunes on the band's aforementioned EP, with distorted guitar lurking deep in the mix, underneath waves of spiraling lead that undulate like light through water. We're very hopeful "State Police" is a harbinger of another release from Hisoft, as we think nine years is plenty long to wait between releases, yeah? We shall keep you apprised. Stream the new tune via the Soundcloud embed below and stream Amateur via Spotify right here.



>> Sticking with Philadelphia, we were very pleased to get a ping about a new collection of recordings from visionary electronic producer Joe Patitucci, who operates under the nomme de guerre Tadoma and also co-founded the next-level digital label Data Garden. It's been two years since we last heard from Tadoma, but out of the blue Tuesday Bandcamp hipped us to the existence of a new set titled Journeys Through Time. The four-song, 30-ish minute collection is comprised of songs improvised and recorded live in August 2012 at Philadelphia's scene-making Johnny Brenda's venue. According to Mr. Patitucci, the live performance was inspired by a meditation tape titled Journeys Through Time that he received from his Data Garden co-founder -- and former Diagram bandmate -- Alex Tyson. "All tracks were performed on-the-fly, without pre-programmed sequences or beats." The music is engrossing, blending thick and airy synth tones, spare beats, found audio, and analog and digital delays into a compelling soundworld that begins and ends much more quickly than the half-hour run time would have you believe. Fans of the popular Boards Of Canada records will find a lot to like here, but frankly we are equally impressed by the fact that the music was improvised as we are with the music itself. Journeys Through Time is available as a paywhutchyalike download from Bandcamp right here. Tadoma's prior release, unleashed in 2013, was the terrific demos collection Nascent Zones, which remains available at Bandcamp and which we wrote about right here. Stream all of Journeys Through Time via the embed below.

Show Us Yours #11: Sun Airway

[Photo Credit: Mike Fleming][Alt Photo 1; Alt. Photo 2] We were as surprised as the next guy when Philebrity broke the news in October that The A-Sides were officially kaput and in its place had blossomed the relatively mysterious electro/psych-pop duo Sun Airway. The act is comprised of former A-Sides singer and guitarist Jon Barthmus and former A-Sides drummer Patrick Marsceill, and we've heard little from the duo since that initial announcement. So we figured it was high time to check in with Sun Airway and see what is going on via our recently resuscitated Show Us Yours series. Among other things, we learned that the guys plan to release a free EP to the Internet sometime in the relatively near future and a full length this summer; that their practice space is more aptly described as a recording space; and that the space is brilliantly monikered. So with our thanks to Mr. Barthmus for playing along, here is Sun Airway in Show Us Yours #11.

Why did you choose this space?

We didn't particularly choose this space... We were essentially kicked out of our last space because the building was trying to attract a more "normal" clientele, and of course these new tenants didn't want live music below them at all hours. There was something about theater companies complaining or something, but there was definitely porn going on somewhere in the building, along with some semi-sweatshops and other art studios. Anyway, the owners of that building had just bought up another random abandoned factory in an even more remote and desolate part of town so they offered us our pick of the new rooms, and then they built it up for us and put power in. There are still very few tenants which is weird because the building is HUGE but our space is amazing and surprisingly conducive to musical activities. Part of our space almost looked like a studio already with a window into what could be a control room. But we just have one band on each side. We currently share the space with Brown Recluse Sings, who are A) a good band and B) good roomies.

Explain how an idiosyncracy or quirk of this space or a former practice space has affected a song (or even your overall sound).

When we moved into the space, we were still The A-Sides and we were just all standing in a big circle trying to practice in the least noisy spot. But once that fizzled and Sun Airway started, we don't really practice. We just record all the time, so we shifted the space into a recording studio. We don't know what we're doing so we built a drum tent, which is now sort of a vocal tent and we kind of just move stuff around and set stuff up arbitrarily and record until we like what comes out. Also, at the moment it is oppressively cold in there so we're kind of just doing quick takes and going with it because it's too cold to harp on it. I guess that could be how the space is currently affecting the music! Too cold to labor over anything!

You walk into your space. What's the first thing you smell? Why?

You walk into our space. You smell mostly construction-type smells. Outside of our door almost everything is unfinished and there's crazy construction dust everywhere. Even though we painted our whole space to make it insanely awesome and even varnished our painted-black floor, the dust seems to get in. On a side note, walking up to our door you see a beautiful image of Phil Collins along with the name Sususudio Studios, Ltd. since that's what we named the place. And that my friends, smells like brilliance.

Getting what ended up being the final A-Sides record out into the world appeared to be a major hurdle for the band, but the relationship with Vagrant seemed like a very positive development. Will Sun Airway be able to benefit from that relationship with Vagrant in any way, assuming it ended up being positive for you guys as artists and touring musicians? When can we expect to hear a full-length from you guys anyway?

I can't say that the relationship between Vagrant and The A-Sides was really positive. I'm extremely grateful that they came along and paid for the record, etc. But something just seemed to be lacking with everything that happened since then. Once a label like that starts to see that they're not making their money back they become impossible to even get a hold of. I think they used up all their effort right away and then gave up. There will be no Vagrant involvement in anything we do moving forward. At the very least though, they did get Silver Storms decent distribution and they probably helped a little bit in getting us on the road. Although our booking agent even said we'd be better off without them, so take that as you will. As far as a full-length from Sun Airway, that should see the light of day hopefully by the summertime. First we're doing a 5-song free downloadable EP which is almost done. Just some more mixing to do. Then we'll just continue recording until we have enough songs for a full length. The songs have all been written, most quite a while ago, but since we're producing it ourselves it's much more of a process. It's not a matter of writing and practicing songs, it's a matter of building a song up until we're satisfied with the results, which is different for us. We're used to going into a studio and hoping for the best.

What do the next six months look like for Sun Airway?

The next sixth months for us will just be a lot of recording and once we have enough material to play a show, we'll have to figure out how the hell we're going to pull any of it off live. Since most of what we're doing is sample-based and electronic beat heavy, we really have no idea how this is all gonna work. But we'll try!

Sun Airway -- "Waiting On You"
The A-Sides -- "Here Or There" -- Hello, Hello
[right click and save as]
[buy A-Sides records from Newbury Comics right here]

Sun Airway: Internerds | MySpace | YouTube | Flickr

Previous Show Us Yours episodes:
Shapes And Sizes | Dirty On Purpose | Relay
Mobius Band | Frightened Rabbit | Assembly Now
Meneguar | Okay Paddy | Charmparticles | Calories

Finding Diagram: Ambient Act Dissipates, New Projects Materialize

Between its web hacienda and MySpace dojo exemplary but sadly defunct abstract dreamers Diagram are giving away a motherlode of music, including all of its excellent three-song History Of The White Flag (Figure 2) EP, released in late 2005. Like many great Philadelphia acts, we first learned of Diagram via the also sadly defunct WhyMe? podcast. Our fandom for the band was rekindled upon hearing a track from their first EP, Fig. 1, bitcast as part of the latest Local Support podcast. The most-recent missive from the trio of Joe Patitucci, David Bohl and Alex Tyson at the Diagram web site indicates the band was to spend the first few months of 2006 writing and recording a new collection of songs.

As that was some time ago, we emailed Mr. Patitucci for an update and learned that the band is done and its principals have splintered into other projects. Mr. Tyson plays with the hotly tipped '70s SoCal rock-influenced act Brown Recluse Sings; Patitucci helms the very promising ambient electronic project Tadoma (link; think Boards Of Canada meets More-era Pink Floyd); and Mr. Bohl charts bleepier, more Kraftwerk-informed electronic territory with Map Of The World At Night operating out of Brooklyn. Fans of Boston's Charlene or New York's Daylight's For The Birds should make a concerted effort at collecting all of the Diagram material they can get their hands on. We'll post one track from each EP and a nice Map Of The World At Night cut below. Local fans will be interested to note that Brown Recluse Sings is slated to play PA's Lounge in Somerville, Mass. May 24.

Diagram -- "I Am Not Invincible" -- Fig. 1
Diagram -- "Surrender To Time" -- History Of The White Flag (Fig. 2)
Map Of The World At Night -- "Arp Rhodes Lullabye Rendered 2" -- MySpace download
[right click and save as]
[buy Diagram EPs, well, nowhere -- they're simply not for sale anywhere]

Diagram: Internets | MySpace | YouTube | Flickr