Altered Zones

Microphone Memory Emotion says:
William Anderson came to Brooklyn with a dream. Then he followed another dream to Vancouver. With Anderson through it all was the ever-playing brain-dream which, put to “tape,” is WEED. “Cody Girl” is WEED at its most vulnerable. Though every song on his To The North cassette and DC Hope EP features what can only be described as a rich, butter-dipped, sticky sound, “Cody Girl” feels almost bare. It’s an emotion-laden song, and Anderson lays it all out. From the guitar jams to the muted snare, each sound stirs the pot of melancholy. About halfway through there’s a breakdown, which could signify that Anderson has figured something out. Or it could just be an interesting way to segue the song from point A to B. As for the fact that “Cody Girl” takes more than 4 minutes to transpire...well, there’s a lot to get out.

MP3: WEED: "Cody Girl"

DC-Hope EP is available on cassette and digital download via bandcamp. A new WEED EP is out on Orchid Tapes this Fall

Crafting a perfect pop song often tends to an exercise in subtlety. Such is the case with Buddy Holly's sublime "Words of Love" which is more complex than at once appears. The song was never became a big hit for him, but influenced many an artist including The Beatles who covered it on Beatles For Sale by turning a rather melancholy song into pure pop.

Enter Philly's lo-fi wizard Scott Churchman, who crafted this beautiful cover of the tune. He tells me, "it's just me and a shitty keyboard i got off the street for two dollars, a broken tape-delay, some autoharp and guitar. I listen to his version and I really like the vocal harmonies. They are a little bit of creepiness hidden in a happy song. So i decided to exploit that fact and bring it down to a speed that i could relate to. Love isn't always peppy. This is how i thought those harmonies should feel." (via YVYNYL)

MP3: Scott Churchman: "Words Of Love"

Pick up Scott's limited edition releases with hand-made artwork from Single Girl, Married Girl Records.

Weird Canada says: 
Montreal visual artist Emily Pelstring conjures a musty, screen-projected miasma to capture The Pink Noise's basement macabre. "Wild Love"'s drum machine-laced free-jack punk is disturbingly realized as a distorted retro-eroticism; mystic bellies topped with Residential eyeballs undulate to the beat of The Pink Noise's busted cabaret. As if anything could match the song's churning, lysergic rotoscope, the video climaxes with a psychedelic array of limbs, eyeballs, space, and dancing. It's the perfect visceral accompaniment to an otherwise indescribable reverberation within Canada's leftfield cosmos.

Graffiti Youth is out now on Kill Shaman