Today's Landlocked Beacon is here to briefly teach you some music history. What happened on this day? Do you know? Well, it was on this very day in 1954 that Robert Zimmerman aka Bob Dylan celebrated his bar mitzvah. Betcha didn't know that eh? And not only that, but four years later, in 1958, Jerry Lee Lewis announced that he had married his 13-year-old cousin, Myra. Wow. Which one of these new releases will go down in the annals of history alongside those scintillating factoids? We shall see... Select New Arrivals for the Week of 05/22/2007 ------------------------------------------------------------------ (Exact arrival dependent on shipping delays and mishaps, sorry) Meg Baird - Dear Companion (Drag City) ................................................................... Meg Baird is the female vocalist in Espers and many folk's favorite part of the band. Titled Dear Companion, it is a barren, beauteous solo debut that takes you back to a time when the Incredible String Band ruled the world ... well maybe Northern California ... and Joni Mitchell, the Grateful Dead and Neil Young were like Gods. It is a mixture of original and obscure covers and an a cappella and will certainly flip out Espers fans. A musical companion that will show you a bit of the traditional sandstone that folk is built upon and the simultaneous empathy and entertainment it can provide. Battles - Mirrored CD/2LP (Warp) ................................................................... Mirrored has proven to be well worth the wait. A complete eclipse of their earlier work, Mirrored embodies all the prior ideas and qualities that have surrounded the group and extrapolates exponentially upon them. The fractured rhythms, crystalline staccato guitar lines and throttling drums remain. New textures and horizons become attainable through the additions of vocals courtesy of Tyondai Braxton. Creatively applied and manipulated, the addition of these vocals evoke qualities of a completely new and innovative instrument, with or without the use of lyrics. With Mirrored, Battles have effectively eschewed all conventional formulas and created their own cohesive precedent. Ben + Vesper - All This Could Kill You (Sounds Familyre) ................................................................... This 13-song album smartly navigates wildly disparate genres and styles. If it must be classified, it would be 1/3 English country lane, 1/3 croonsville, 1/16th Motown, 1/32 Brazilian psychodelialand, and 1/32 dark mythic forest. This is music that innocently holds hands with innovation and accessibility. Every song offers instrumentation that is wonderfully diverse and concise, derived from a team of formidable players such as Sufjan Stevens and Brother Danielson, as well as family and friends. All This Could Kill You achieves what all timeless music does: to look squarely at the sufferings of this life and hold out hope like a weapon for all to wield, and to have fun all the while. Cex - Sketchi CD (Temporary Residence) ................................................................... Six years in the making, Sketchi is Cex's densest, darkest, and longest album to date; slow-moving ambient dirges that are heavy on the beats and light on vocals (being instrumental and all). There are sounds in these songs that you will swear are not of this world, and truth be told, you never know with the Cex man. Take all your clothes off, paint your face, beat your fists into the floor and pray that this lasts forever. Handsome Furs - Plague Park (Sub Pop) ................................................................... Dark and minimal while noisy and earnest, the point of this duo was to be as sparse and repetitive as possible with the help of little more than vocals, guitars, and a drum machine. Disenchanted vocals thinly resonate while cloaked in a frenzied undertone of fear and uncertainty, all punctuated by bare drum machine beats. Their debut is a record of melancholic tendency and heartfelt desire; a stripped down symphony relegated between city and country, and made for ears of either side. Hot Chip - DJ Kicks (K7) ................................................................... For Hot Chip's installment of the legendary DJ-Kicks series, the boys deliver an eclectic mix that features everything from German minimal techno to classic pop, hip-hop, grime and garage. This is a mix that covers an unbelievable broad range of styles and truly pulls it off. To top off the mix, they threw in a brand new, exclusive Hot Chip track entitled "Piano Song," which takes their sound to an entirely new level. Ladyhawk - Fight For Anarchy 12" EP (Jagjaguwar) ................................................................... Life is full of ups and downs. Sometimes you get up just to get down again. Sometimes you run just to feel the wind against your face, and sometimes you stand still to watch things crumble around you. The end result is the sound of four brothers breaking something down to create something new, reaching into the fire again. It is a shattering 6-song march, all unmuzzled and jawing out, nothing edited or expunged. And on it Ladyhawk show that, like Spoon, Dinosaur Jr or Tom Waits, they have the ability to conjure growls, snarls, and storms of sound into musical lightning, never striking the same place twice. Madagascar - Goodbye East, Goodbye West (Western Vinyl) ................................................................... Goodbye East, Goodbye West is the 2nd album from Baltimore's Madagascar. Both live performances and first album Forced March have been compared to music as disparate as Balkan folk, post-rock, Black Heart Procession, Explosions in the Sky, Devotchka, and Sigur Ros. Each track uses crisscrossing accordion, saw, and glockenspiel melodies- anchored by bass, acoustic guitar, and percussion. From playful waltzes and clanky dirges to minimalist scrapes and drones, Goodbye East, Goodbye West is a uniquely satisfying and mystifying collection of songs. The National - Boxer (Beggars Banquet) ................................................................... The follow-up to 2005's Alligator is filled with lush arrangements and sees the band incorporating new instrumentation and expanded musical elements such as piano, trumpet, and more prominent background vocals. "...churning grooves and shambling new wave rips, turning up depressed guitar poetry that's both elegantly wasted and kinda murky" - Rolling Stone. Parts & Labor - Mapmaker (Jagjaguwar/Brah) ................................................................... Mapmaker is the second Jagjaguwar/Brah album from Brooklyn noisepunks Parts & Labor. Expanding on the soaring melodies and cracked electronics of 2006’s Stay Afraid, P&L explores a wider array of berserk, malfunctioning instruments and intricate, pummeling rhythms. These 12 political/personal anthems about ambition and distraction boast bigger choruses, denser drones and shinier hooks. Check it out in our listening station! Andrew Pekler - Cue (Kranky) ................................................................... Andrew Pekler has previous releases on ~scape and Staubgold, is one third of the Kosmischer Pitch live band, and is part of an as yet unnamed project with Jan Jelenik and Hanno Leichtmann. This is his ode to library music from yesteryear, it is rich, strange and occasionally opressive; chamber music from a chamber that couldn't exist. Ulrich Schnauss - Quicksand Memory EP (Domino) ................................................................... It's been over 6 years since Schnauss introduced the world to his wonderful blend of electronic textures and shoegazer aesthetics featured on his debut, "Far Away Trains Passing By". It's also been 4 years since "A Strangely Isolated Place" hit shelves in his native Germany and cemented his place among the elite electronic artists. That album combined the early 90s sound of pioneering acts like Slowdive and My Bloody Valentine with modern electronic tapestries. "Quicksand Memory" brings Ulrich's musical drought to an end, featuring two new tracks and Cocteau Twin Robin Guthrie's re-workings of two of Ulrich's most celebrated songs, "Gone Forever" and "On My Own". Shapes & Sizes - Split Lips, Winning Hips (Asthmatic Kitty) ................................................................... Shapes and Sizes have refined their brand of experimental pop to create a cohesive, demanding and rewarding listen. The new album is proof that Shapes and Sizes aim to please the while not pandering. Imagine a soulful top 40 Thinking Fellers playing songs for the prom. "Pop songs can often feel like variations on the same pattern... Shapes and Sizes are able to remix that formula, creating pop tunes that feel just slightly off, and thus become infinitely more interesting." - CMJ. Check it out in our listening station! Stars - Do You Trust Your Friends? (Arts & Crafts) ................................................................... Do You Trust Your Friends? is the reworking of the Stars acclaimed 2004 album Set Yourself On Fire. Band friends of have remixed Set Yourself On Fire track for track. With mixes from Final Fantasy, Minotaur Shock, Dears, Junior Boys, Apostles of Hustle, Russian Futurists, Metric, Stills and more. Voxtrot - s/t (Play Louder) ................................................................... On their debut full length, these Anglophile Texans jettison the overt influences of their justly-lauded early singles and EPs for a slightly harder and more diverse sound. The songs range from pretty, poignant, and piano-driven numbers to more manic and guitar-heavy songs. There's an undeniable, infectious energy at work here which is put to great use with the self-deprecating humor and immense pop chops. It'd be ridiculous to say you've never heard music like this before, even if you're a newbie to British indie-pop from the last 25 years. Fans of Ted Leo, Wedding Present, and Clap Your Hands will find much to enjoy here. Loudon Wainwright III - Strange Weirdos (Concord) ................................................................... A diehard Wainwright fan, director Judd Apatow explains in his notes that he asked the Loudon to score Knocked Up, his follow-up to The 40-Year-Old Virgin. The resulting album features material that Wainwright had written before the film score that the director wanted to use, other cuts that are instrumental snippets in the movie but are songs with lyrics on the album, and still others that take thematic inspiration from the film. While Wainwright so often writes lacerating and hilariously personal material, many of these songs are more like character studies, with a musical range that extends from ragtime to cabaret to the blues. Among the musicians providing stellar support are guitarists Richard Thompson and Greg Leisz and keyboardists Patrick Warren and Van Dyke Parks. Young Galaxy - S/T (Arts & Crafts) ................................................................... Young Galaxy is the creative confluence of kindred spirits, Stephen Ramsay and Catherine McCandless. Its an impressive entry point for a group at the beginning of their ascent. Call it a spark in the dry air of a sub-zero city or the child of a love of making music and of making music with the ones they love. Recorded with Jace Lasek (Besnard Lakes) at his Breakglass Studio. They have found a way back to a musical sensibility before rock was shattered into a thousand different aesthetic compromises and landed on the rarest musical alchemy and made of it an instant pop classic. Also Released On This Day ------------------------------------------------------------------ Black Dice - Roll Up 12" (Paw Tracks) The Bravery - The Sun and the Moon (Island) Jeff Buckley - Amazing Grace DVD (Sony) Erasure - Light at the End of the World (Mute) Gang Gang Dance - Retina Riddim (Social Registry) Jena Malone & Her Bloodstains - Tested Dry 7" (Social Registry) Jeremy Jay - Dreamland LP (St Ives) Khan - Who Never Rests (Tomlab) Charles Mingus - In Paris Complete America Session (Sunny Side) Old Time Relijun - Tightest Cage 7inch (K) Ozzy Osbourne - Black Rain (Epic) Richard Swift - Kisses for the Misses 7" (Secretly Canadian) True Primes - We Have Won (Locust) Vietnam - EP#1 12" (Social Registry) Wheat - Everyday I Said a Prayer ... (Empyrean) V/A - The Need for a Crossing: A New New Zealand (Table of the Elements) ................................................................... Pre-Order/Reserve one of next week's releases and guarantee you'll have it when its released!!! info@landlockedmusic.com ................................................................... Acid Mothers Temple - Crystal Rainbow Pyramid Under the Stars (5/29) Blues Control - s/t (5/29) Je Suis France - Afrikan Majik (5/29) Scout Niblett - Dinosaur Egg EP (5/29) Piano Magic - Part Monster (5/29) Omar Rodriguez-Lopez - Se Dice Bisonte No Buffalo (5/29) Judee Sill - Live in London: BBC Recordings (5/29) Sole - Mansbestfriend (5/29) Richard Thompson - Sweet Warrior (5/29) ................................................................... Coming Soonish (dates often subject to change, sorry) ................................................................... Ryan Adams - Easy Tiger (6/5) Afghan Whigs - Unbreakable: A Retrospective (6/5) The Aggrolites - Reggae Hit LA (6/5) Amandine - Solace in Sore Hands (6/5) Cinematic Orchestra - Ma Fleur (6/5) Chris Cornell - Carry On (6/5) Brett Dennen - More From So Much More (6/5) Grave Temple Trio - The Holy Down (6/5) Jesus Lizard - Live DVD (6/5) Junior Boys - So This Is Goodbye [deluxe] (6/5) Ladybug Transistor - Can't Wait Another Day (6/5) Long Blondes - Someone to Drive You Home (6/5) Marilyn Manson - Eat Me, Drink Me (6/5) Paul McCartney - Memory Almost Full (6/5) Ingrid Michaelson - Girls and Boys (6/5) Minibar - Desert After Rain (6/5) Panic Strikes A Chord - Cautionary Verses For Children (6/5) Pelican - City of Echoes (6/5) Jonathan Richman - Revolution Summer OST (6/5) Shellac - Excellent Italian Greyhound (6/5) Bruce Springsteen - Live In Dublin (6/5) Tiger Army - Music from Regions Beyond (6/5) Trembling Blue Stars - The Last Holy Writer (6/5) Porter Wagoner - Wagonmaster (6/5) Datarock - s/t (6/12) Jaylib - Champion Sound [2CD reissue] (6/12) Queens of the Stone Age - Era Vulgaris (6/12) Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation [deluxe reissue] (6/12) Traveling Wilburys - [2CD reissue] (6/12) Wooden Wand - James and the Quiet (6/12) Artanker Convoy - Cozy Endings (6/19) Begushkin - Nightly Things (6/19) Sir Richard Bishop - While My Guitar Violently Bleeds (6/19) Bumps - s/t (6/19) Burning Brides - Hang Love (6/19) Nick Drake - Family Tree (6/19) Bryan Ferry - Dylanesque (6/19) Fridge - The Sun (6/19) Lightning Dust - s/t (6/19) Maserati - Inventions for the New Season (6/19) Minus Story - My Ion Truss (6/19) Misha - Teardrop Sweetheart (6/19) Mooney Suzuki - Have Mercy (6/19) Panda Bear - Person Pitch LP (6/19) Xavier Rudd - White Moth (6/19) Savath & Savalas - Golden Pollen (6/19) Telepathe - Sinister Militie (6/19) Tigersmilk - Android Love Cry (6/19) The Unseen - Internal Salvation (6/19) David Vandervelde - Nothin' No EP (6/19) Videohippos - Unbeast the Leash (6/19) Von Spar - s/t (6/19) White Stripes - Icky Thump (6/19) The Yarrows - Plum (6/19) VA - The Great Koonaklaster Speaks: A John Fahey Celebration (6/19) Art Brut - It's a Bit Complicated (6/26) Beastie Boys - The Mix-Up (6/26) Nick Lowe - At My Age (6/26) Pharoahe Monch - Desire (6/26) Bad Religion - New Maps of Hell (7/10) Interpol - Our Love to Admire (7/10) Justice - + (7/10) Patton Oswalt - Werewolves and Lollipops (7/10) Ulrich Schnauss - Goodbye (7/10) Sebadoh - The Freed Man [reissue] (7/10) Smashing Pumpkins - Zeitgeist (7/10) Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (7/10) Motion City Soundtrack - Even If It Kills Me (7/17) Talib Kweli - Ear Drum (7/24) UNKLE - War Stories (7/24) John Vanderslice - Emerald City (7/24) Architecture in Helsinki - Places Like This (8/7) Mirah - Share This Place: Stories and Observations (8/7) Okkervil River - The Stage Names (8/7) Young Marble Giants - Colossal Youth [2CD reissue] (8/7) Angels of Light - We Are Him (8/14) M.I.A. - Kala (8/21) Minus the Bear - Planet of Ice (8/21) New Pornographers - Challengers (8/21) Rilo Kiley - Blacklight (8/21) Aesop Rock - None Shall Pass (8/28) Animal Collective - Strawberry Jam (9/4) Qui - Love's Mirachel (9/11) ------------------------------------------------------------------ Top 5 sellers at Landlocked Music for the week of 5/15 - 5/22: 1. Wilco, Sky Blue Sky (Nonesuch) 2. Rufus Wainwright, Release the Stars (Geffen) 3. Dungen, Tio Bitar (Kemado) 4. Elliott Smith, New Moon (Kill Rock Stars) 5. Balkan Beat Box, Nu Med (JDub) Don't miss the boat! We have still fresh CDs, LPs and DVDs from Arcade FIre, Au Revoir Simone, Balkan Beat Box, Betty Davis, Dungen, Fennesz / Sakamoto, Guided By Voices, Lichens, Mont De Sundua, Pink Martini, TV on the Radio, Rufus Wainwright, Wilco, YACHT, Bjork, the Clientele, Electrelane, Sage Francis, Keren Ann, Lavender Diamond, Maximo Park, of Montreal, OOIOO, Page France, The Sea and Cake, Elliott Smith, Tarwater, Mary Timony Band, Shannon Wright, Numero Group, Brakes, Dan Deacon, Lisa Gerrard, Great Lake Swimmers, Melt Banana, Mystery Jets, Travis, Tori Amos, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Dinosaur Jr, The Fall of Troy, Feist, Frog Eyes, Robbie Fulks, Rush, Patrick Wolf and much much more! ------------------------------------------------------------------ Upcoming shows that Landlocked is helping put together: Saturday, May 26th @ 9pm @ BLUEBIRD NIGHTCLUB - $8 - 21+ ------------------------------------------------------------------ FROG EYES - http://www.myspace.com/frogeyes YEASAYER - http://myspace.com/yeasayer IMPOSSIBLE SHAPES - http://theimpossibleshapes.com/ We have presale tickets for this awesome show at Bluebird next weekend! Frog Eyes descend from Canada to bring us a heaping helping of experimental, indie-psych rock. Apart they account for almost as many musical exports as Broken Social Scene with members doing double duty in Swan  Lake, Sunset Rubdown, and Wolf Parade. Together they unite like Voltron to blow minds. It's been awhile since The Impossible Shapes took to a Bloomington stage but emails and weeks of pleading have called them back. More lo-fi, psychedelic-pop than you can handle, if you haven't seen the Shapes play yet then you really have been wasting your time in Bloomington. Yeasayer are from a future where there is a Middle Eastern city built with glass towers - where everyone is wearing turquoise robes, living in glass castles and jamming on Peter Gabriel records. Debut release imminent on Monitor Records. Wednesday June 6th @ 10pm @ BEAR'S PLACE - $5 - 21+ ------------------------------------------------------------------ MV+EE (Ecstatic Peace) - http://www.ecstaticpeace.com/artist.php?id=8 MARK GALUP (Bloomingtopia) - http://myspace.com/markgalup VJOB (parts unknown) From the deep wilds of New England, specifically lower Vermont and western Massachusetts, the godfathers of the "new weird america" bring waves of sound to wash over your eardrums, drenched in reverb and covered in grit and dirt. One can only hope this is what awaits in the afterlife. MV & EE float in the sky as protectors. They seem to exist on a plane most people can only dream of. This is music with so many layers and sounds like something you'd hear as you ascended toward the afterlife in Hindu legends. Nothing else on earth sounds like their lunar ragas and fingerstyle noise/space. Mark plays the music of yore- finger-picked acoustic folk-blues a la John Fahey, Robbie Basho, or Leo Kottke. His impressive original songs and arrangements of classics draw him into the fold of moderns like Jack Rose, Ben Chasny, Sir Richard Bishop, Steffen Basho-Junghans, and Tetuzi Akiyama. VJOB---> Ms. Yeppi can't stop screaming, "Show me your tits!" while Mr. Mann keeps thumping on something. When asked what we sound like, all we can say is, "We're like holy water, only thicker." Tuesday June 12th @ 8pm @ Landlocked Music - $tba ------------------------------------------------------------------ WRACK QUINTET - http://kylebruckmann.com/ (D)ynamic (B)lack (H)ips With Kyle Bruckmann (oboe, english horn), Jason Stein (bass clarinet), Jen Clare Paulson (viola), Anton Hatwich (bass), and Tim Daisy (percussion). Wrack is both a chamber ensemble with a highly unusual instrumentation and a book of compositions tailor-made for the musical personalities of its members. While the compositions' melodic and contrapuntal content is reminiscent of European classical modernism, the open structures, improvisational procedures and energetic performances are heavily indebted to the innovations of the African-American Creative Music tradition. In other words, equal parts free-jazz, gypsy/klezmer, Raymond Scott cartoon music, modern composition and ambient texture. MP3s: http://kylebruckmann.com/kbcom_MP3s/Wrack_system.mp3 http://kylebruckmann.com/kbcom_MP3s/Wrack_slippery.mp3 http://kylebruckmann.com/kbcom_MP3s/Wrack_ado.mp3 More information about shows and more on the horizon is available for the technologically inclined at http://myspace.com/landlockedbton and http://www.landlockedmusic.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------------ We are looking to buy/trade all your old unwanted CDs & LPs! Bring 'em in and we'll make an offer. We are also ready, willing and able to special order anything for you. Email us or drop in and we will hook you up with whatcha need. Feel free to forward this to all your lovely friends that need to know whats going on, we'd love to have them join our little party here on the newsletter. Tell us what you think, what you desire. ------------------------------------------------------------------ BFF, Jason & Heath info@landlockedmusic.com Landlocked Music 314 S. Washington St. (next door to Boxcar Books) Bloomington, IN, 47401 http://www.landlockedmusic.com/ http://myspace.com/landlockedbton (812) 339 - 2574 Hours of Operation: Monday - Saturday : 11:30am - 7:30pm Sunday : Noon - 5pm