Today's Hotness: Flying Saucer Attack, Happy Diving, Mourn

>> A particularly cultish corner of the experimental rock music world was driven to hysteria month ago when it was finally announced that Flying Saucer Attack, one of the finest shoegaze/drone concerns of the 1990s, would release Instrumentals 2015 on Drag City Records this month. The new collection, due July 17, will be the band's first in 15 years! The apparently aptly titled, 15-song set features pieces recorded by fronter David Pearce (partner and vocalist Rachel Brook presumably sits this one out) to analog tape and CD-R at his home, a medium which served the band well on landmark static-und-drone releases Further and Distance. With hopes of appealing to both die-hard fans and those unfamiliar with the its catalog, Flying Saucer Attack's two preview tracks gently lull the listener while providing windows into Pearce's thoughtful and powerful sound world. "Instrumental 7" opens with smooth, mid-range guitar feedback that dramatically shuts off briefly at various intervals. As each drop-out occurs, swells of supporting notes join the feedback tone to establish additional new harmonies. Second single "Instrumental 4" takes a different approach, instead employing ear-splitting cascades of feedback and slowly plucked single-note guitar leads to slow time and space to a hypnotic background whir. With each track, the subtle mastery of the dynamics is first-class. Like another dreamy '90s shoegaze group, Auburn Lull, did last year with its magnificent Hiber cassette, the inimitable FSA have reappeared to show the seemingly burgeoning legions of bedroom drone instrumentalists how things are done. Pre-order Instrumentals 2015 on 12" vinyl, CD or cassette from Drag City Records right here. Both "Instrumental 7" and "Instrumental 4" can be streamed via our curiously but purposefully narrow YouTube embeds below. -- Edward Charlton





>> This publication was properly bowled over by Happy Diving's Father/Daughter-released debut long-player Big World last fall, and last month's news that the group are already set to return with a fresh 7" on the mighty (and getting mightier) Topshelf Records is certainly cause for celebration. Out July 17 on a variety of colored wax, the East Bay, Calif. band's preview single offers up two great, humid, chugging sludge-pop jams. A-side "So Bunted" recalls the Big World standout "Space Ooze" with its atypical structure, dense chordings and bummed-out vocals, while further pressing those signifiers as some of the band's greatest strengths. After a brief opening comprised of post-Blue Album guitar wailing, the group scales back to a single verse where guitarist/singer Matt Berry's plaintive, bruised vocal details a relationship gone as sour as the minor-to-major power chord changes that keep the song both murky and anthemic. Recorded in just four hours at The Atomic Garden with go-to California heavy-rock producer Jack Shirley (Deafhaven, Whirr, Joyce Manor), the two-minute piece is perfectly rendered in all of its live-sounding, signal-clipping glory. Happy Diving stay true to their monolithic approach to twenty-something, house show angst, and it promises even more fuzz-fest payouts on their next album, which at this rate of productivity just might be here by 2016. Pre-order "So Bunted" from Topshelf right here, and catch the band on its upcoming tour, the dates of which are listed out below. Stream "So Bunted" via the Soundcloud embed below. -- Edward Charlton



07/15 -- Oakland, CA -- One Fam
07/17 -- Portland, OR -- TBA
07/18 -- Olympia, WA -- Old School Pizzeria
07/19 -- Seattle, WA -- Office Space
07/20 -- Vancouver, BC -- Alf House
07/21 -- Victoria, BC -- The Mirancave
07/23 -- Santa Rosa, CA -- The Funk Den
07/24 -- San Francisco, CA -- Thee Parkside
07/25 -- Santa Cruz, CA -- Cafe Pergolesi
07/26 -- Los Angeles, CA -- The Echo
07/27 -- Corona, CA -- Sinbad's Hookah Lounge
07/28 -- San Diego, CA -- Che Cafe
07/29 -- Merced, CA -- Tigers & Daggers Records
09/04-09/06 -- Berkeley, CA -- Resurrect Cali Fest @ 924 Gilman

>> This reviewer admittedly missed Mourn's Captured Tracks-released self-titled debut album, which was issued in February, but the quartet's wickedly quick follow up Gertrudis 7" was enough to send us back to listen to it. The much-hyped Catalonian co-ed punk group apparently represent a rising wave of young Spanish punk which has greatly excited tastemakers including Captured Tracks' Mike Sniper, and A-side "Gertrudis, Get Through This!" certainly bears out that heightened interest. Opening with a kinetic, prickly guitar riff, the song highlights the cool vocals of Carla Perez Vas, which echo those of the band's idols including PJ Harvey and Sonic Youth. Building in tension as the instruments remain sturdy and straight, Ms. Vas breaks from a clear and upfront coo to a desperate chorus that brings to mind other European positive feminist punk outfits such as Welsh powerhouse Joanna Gruesome. While straightforward in its construction, the song shifts so dynamically into the "get through this!" chorus that the youthful angst of Mourn arrives in ear canals completely, precisely. Album number two will certainly not be slept on after a wake up call like this, and a release date has been tentatively scheduled for this very month. In the meantime, grab the single digitally via Steve Jobs MegaCo. right here. -- Edward Charlton

Review: Happy Diving | Big World

San Francisco sludge-pop upstarts Happy Diving first breeched our radar at the onset of the year via a digital/cassette EP, but the East Bay act is poised to decisively put its stamp on 2014 with an ear-pleasing, skull-pounding full-length debut titled Big World. Due Nov. 4, the record bears all of the hallmarks of a contemporary classic indie release: recorded quickly (two days); with a hot shot up-and-coming producer (Jack Shirley of Deafheaven, Joyce Manor and Whirr fame); backed by a rising area imprint (Father/Daughter Records). Oh, it also rocks.

As with the likely incessant humming inside producer/The Cars guy Ric Ocasek's head, Happy Diving brings the fuzz. Indeed, Big World channels Ocasek-produced touchstones like Weezer's thrilling blue album and Nada Surf's High/Low -- and, to a lesser extent perhaps, Bad Brains' Rock For Light -- into aggressive punk rock forms. With each pummeling chorus, grit and dirt shudders loose from Happy Diving's sustained, high-output sound like the dessicated refuse from sonic flypaper faced with a strong breeze. And so thick rhythm guitars establish a formidable aural wall along the length of Big World. It's perhaps the most pronounced element substantiating the Weezer comparison (although the band's occasional third guitarist is clearly a big fan), although Happy Diving's melodic sense is fairly keen as well. Even so, the constant clipping and in-the-red tones of songs including "Mikey's Rules" and "Weird Dream," all the searing feedback and sustain, evoke something ultimately darker and more dejected than Rivers Cuomo's adolescent observations. Big World highlight "Space Ooze" follows this model, economizing its down-stroked chords to create a compact punk bruiser with thrilling single-note bends, a quick verse, a sore-and-subtle harmonic "oohing" bridge and a slapdash guitar solo. The tune's breakneck pace implies a sense of danger, leading the song somewhere substantially more troubled. In this context, and especially when taking into account the album art, the album title is less optimistic than it is anxious.

Fronter and guitarist Matt Berry's resigned singing does much to establish the disaffected mood of Big World. Mr. Berry's smooth yet sour pipes evoke the characteristic confusions and frustrations of 20-somethings, specifically that state of feeling one way while being pressured to present another. And so Berry's singing injects another dimension to the sweeter melodies of the more pop-oriented "Sad Planet," and imbues much of Big World with greater emotional depth than a superficial read of its songs might otherwise note. Still, song titles like "Always Noon," "Whatever" and the aforementioned quirky, sci-fi referencing duo "Sad Planet" and "Space Ooze," evidence that Happy Diving don't take all of this rock 'n' roll business too, too seriously. So as the listener can imagine the year-old foursome running through its repertoire in a dimly-lit basement -- pissed off and disenchanted with the world, perhaps -- she or he can still also imagine Berry and co. still goofing off and having fun.

Big World will be released by Father/Daughter Nov. 4. Said release is being celebrated with a release party tomorrow night in Oakland, Calif. at 1234 Records; the show includes Fish Breath, LVL Up and Big Ups. The album is available as a digital download as well as a limited edition vinyl 12" pressed to oxblood, oxblood and baby blue splatter, or classic black media, and it appears there are only 100 pieces of each, so be sure to pre-order one while they last via the band's Bandcamp right here. The entirely un-eff-withable Art Is Hard label will release a cassette version of Big World in the UK Nov. 3; there are only 100 of those available. Stream three tracks from the record via the embeds below. -- Edward Charlton

Happy Diving: Bandcamp | Facebook