Today's Hotness: Lilys, Dinosaur Jr., Qui

>> Hot blog Built On A Weak Spot here examines Lilys' stellar 1992 debut In The Presence Of Nothing, and offers up a few MP3s to boot. The record is obscenely out-of-print, but there are used copies out there. In the comments to the post we advised interested parties to track down the Lilys' superlative and even more rare Tone Bender EP, the main selling point of which is the track "Eskimo." The track isn't available on CD anywhere else, so far as we know. We think we've posted "Eskimo" before, but for those of you who haven't heard it, here it is once again for a very limited time. The Tone Bender EP was released by Summershine but we are not sure which year -- likely 1993, but that's just a guess. Anyway, we wrote about the EP previously here. The excitingly rejuvenated Slumberland Records site is hosting MP3s of other tracks from the EP including "February 14th," which we've linked below as well.

Lilys -- "Eskimo" -- Tone Bender EP
Lilys -- "February 14th" -- February 14th b/w Threw A Day 7"
[right click and save as]
[buy Lilys records from Newbury Comics here]

>> Speaking of buying music, we are very excited about the Other Music digital store that is online here. Idolator breaks down the salient whys and wherefores here. Basically, the tracks are encoded at a very nice 320Kbps and retail for about $1.11 a piece. We already ran over to try to buy a digital version of Kompakt's Pop Ambient 2007, which we accidentally purchased on vinyl from Forced Exposure. Anyway, we were all set to punch in our credit card information at Other Music Digital when we glanced at the page URL and noticed the usual HTTP as opposed to the secure HTTPS. The site's FAQ states that it uses SSL to protect transactions, but we weren't about to give our credit card number without double checking. We wrote to the customer service address and we'll let you know if we learn anything interesting.

>> According to the industrious folks over at FreakScene.net, alternative rock behemoth Dinosaur Jr. is slated to perform on The Late Show With David Letterman on April 30. That happens to be the eve of the release of the band's fantastic new set Beyond, which we reviewed here. The FreakScene freakers also tracked down a clip of J Mascis performing on Norwegian television recently. It's a little tricky to access, and in fact we couldn't quite figure it out, but if you've got some time to kill, the details are in this thread.

>> Just a bit of a follow-up on our item from last night: we had no idea today would be the day that Qui news was going to break, but broke it did less than 24 hours after we mentioned them in the intro to yesterday's A Silver Mount Zion review. Anyway, Pitchfork reports here that the band has signed with Touch And Go and will issue the set Love's Miracle Sept. 11. Amazingly, the set will include a cover of Pink Floyd's epic "Echoes." Wild.

>> Pun Canoes just published a lengthy interview here with the filmmakers of the excellent documentary "American Hardcore," which we wrote about previously here and here and here. Worth sitting down and spending some time with, and if you haven't seen the documentary and are a fan of any sort of modern alternative music, well, you have to see this.

Today's Hotness: Wilco, Pole, Amazon, MySpace

>> Alt-rock gigantes Wilco have certainly got album marketing down to a science. Chromewaves here points us to a feature in Billboard that discusses the act's forthcoming record, Sky Blue Sky due May 15, and it lists off various planned sales permutations. The most appealing to us is the audiophile-grade vinyl that comes with a copy of the CD included. Not because we are a real vinyl devotee -- we're not, despite the fact that we continue to accidentally order LPs instead of CDs every now and again (resulting in our receiving a vinyl version of Kompakt's amazing Pop Ambient 2007 10 days ago). No, the reason we really like the vinyl-with-CD package is because these days we don't really do much with CDs anymore after ripping them to our hard drive, so getting the vinyl as a bonus means we can occasionally throw the record on or frame the album art if it jazzes us in real life. In addition to the vinyl/CD release, there will be a deluxe CD release that includes a DVD with a making-of documentary entitled "Shake It Off;" ITunes gets an exclusive outtake to go with its sales of the record; "indie coalitions" -- which we presume means Insound, Other Music and the like -- will sell a version of Sky Blue Sky that comes with a bonus disc with outtakes and live performances. The Billboard article is very good; read the whole thing here. And of course you can already stream Sky Blue Sky at Wilco's web site here, where they are also hosting a download from the record, a zip file containing the song "What Light."

Wilco -- "What Light" -- Sky Blue Sky
[.zip file; right click and save as]

>> Speaking of Pop Ambient 2007, another disc we received in that shipment was Pole's Steingarten, which Stylus reviews here today. After the disappointing foray into soundtracking a bland rapper on Pole's last outing, Steingarten is a refreshing return to Stefan Betke's dreamy electrodub. We reviewed Pole's 2003 self-titled effort and the EPs that preceded it for Junkmedia here, here and here. Anyway, how about an MP3 from the new and thoroughly satisfying Pole jawn?

Pole -- "Sylvenstein" -- Steingarten
[right click and save as]

>> Amazon.com may finally enter the digital music game next month, after at least seven years of speculation. Billboard reports here that the digital storefront may launch a service next month that will likely include DRM-free Classical music licensed from Universal's catalog. Here's hoping Amazon has gotten its digital act together significantly since the TV On The Radio pre-order debacle we ranted about in all of these places (1, 2, 3, 4). The Billboard article has interesting background about a scuttled launch of the Amazon service last year, as well as additional information about license negotiations with other labels that turn on wholesale pricing and bitrates.

>> This Wired article claims MySpace owns 81% of the social networking market. Interesting, considering our perception is that MySpace is sort of on the wane. Facebook, which we've never even looked at because, well, we're old, owns 10% of the market. There's no overt music angle to the story, just thought it was notable that MySpace's grip on the so-called social networking space is more robust than we had assumed. Now everybody switch over to Virb already.
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