Altered Zones

About a month ago, we hosted our sold out CMJ showcase with araabMUZIK, Trash Talk, Grimes, Eric Copeland, among others at the New Museum. Pitchfork TV was there on the scene filming some of our favorite artists, and caught this live rendition of Teengirl Fantasy's "Dancing in Slow Motion." Stay tuned for more videos from Light Asylum, Trash Talk, and more. --Ric Leichtung, Altered Zones

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Altered Zones is excited to announce the set times for our unofficial CMJ extravaganza at the New Museum tomorrow. Atlas Sound recently jumped on the bill, and there also a few new names on the Nuit Blanche New York-curated roster of visual artists, which will include Alice Cohen, Liz Harris (Grouper), Luke Wyatt, Miko Revereza, Camilla Padgitt-Coles, Stephanie Wuertz, Todd Ledford, Olivia Wyatt, James Thacher, Ethan Vogt, and Brock Monroe of Joshua Light Show.

Altered Zones takes place at the New Museum, located at 235 Bowery in Downtown Manhattan. It starts at 7:30 p.m. and costs $20 for New Museum members and $25 for general admission. Buy tickets here. This event is 21+. Beer will be provided by Brooklyn Brewery.

Theatre:

08:00 pm (downstairs) Dive
09:00 pm (downstairs) Teengirl Fantasy
10:00 pm (downstairs) Light Asylum
11:00 pm  (downstairs) Eric Copeland
12:00 am (downstairs) Trash Talk
1:00 am (downstairs) Atlas Sound

Skyroom:
08:30 pm (upstairs) FORMA
09:30 pm (upstairs) Xeno & Oaklander
10:30 pm (upstairs) Prince Rama
11:30 pm  (upstairs) GRIMES
12:30 am (upstairs) AraabMUZIK

Lobby (DJs):
Awesome Tapes From Africa 8-9
Weird Magic 9-10
Todd Pendu 10-11
Main Attrakionz  11-12
Ayshay 12-1

Update: We are thrilled to announce today that Atlas Sound has joined the lineup of our event this Saturday at New Museum! More information, as well as set times, will be revealed Friday.

This Saturday, October 22nd, Altered Zones is throwing an unofficial CMJ party at the the New Museum. Inspired by the idea of setting some of our favorite artists from the DIY music world in the museum context, we've teamed with our parent site, Pitchfork, to put together a line-up of AraabMuzik, Grimes, Teengirl Fantasy, Trash Talk, Eric Copeland, Prince Rama, Light Asylum, Xeno and Oaklander, FORMA, and Dive, not to mention a killer stable of DJs, including Awesome Tapes From Africa, Weird Magic, Todd Pendu, Main Attrakionz, and Ayshay.

Visuals will be curated by Nuit Blanche New York, will feature Alice Cohen, Grouper's Liz Harris, Luke Wyatt, Miko Revereza, Camilla Padgitt-Coles, and more. The New Museum, our city's only museum devoted exclusively to contemporary art, will be donating a portion of the proceeds to the 2012 New Museum triennial, which is an international exhibition of emerging artists.

Altered Zones takes place at the New Museum, located at 235 Bowery in Downtown Manhattan. It starts at 7:30 p.m. and costs $20 for New Museum members and $25 for general admission. Buy tickets here. This event is 21+. Beer will be provided by Brooklyn Brewery.

MP3: Atlas Sound: "Te Amo"

MP3: araabMUZIK: "Streetz Tonight"

MP3: Trash Talk: "Explode"

MP3: Eric Copeland: "Krankendudel"

MP3: Grimes: "Vanessa"

MP3: Dive: "Sometime"

MP3: Ayshay: "WARN-U"

MP3: Main Attrakionz: "Perfect Skies"

MP3: Grouper: "Alien Observer"

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A few exciting (and eclectic) new additions to the AnCo-curated ATP extravaganza slated for May 13-15 in Butlins, Minehead, UK appeared on the ATP website this morning, including Outkast's Big Boi, legendary minimalist composer Terry Riley, Bradford Cox's Atlas Sound, Black Dice's Eric Copeland, Teengirl Fantasy, Tickley Feather, and a rare reappearance by San Francisco's Thinking Fellers Union Local 282. Check the ATP website, where you can also purchase tickets, for the full list of additions.

On the trails of quite a few top lists this year, Oberlin producer duo Teengirl Fantasy have geared up for a month-long international tour, the first leg in the US and the other in Europe. --Ric Leichtung, Altered Zones

Wed 1/5- Waldorf Hotel, Vancouver, BC
Thu 1/6- Vera Project, Seattle, WA *
Fri 1/7 – Holoscene, Portland, OR *
Sat 1/8- Elbo Room, San Fransisco, CA *
Sun 1/9- 418 Project, Santa Cruz, CA *
Mon 1/10- Central Social, Santa Monica, CA *
Tue 1/11- Echoplex, Los Angeles, CA*
Thu 1/13- Los Angeles, CA ~DJ Set~
Fri 1/14- Soda Bar, San Diego, CA*

Wed 1/19- Studio80, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Thu 1/20 – Hoxton Bar & Grill, London, UK
Fri 1/21 Lexington, London, UK
Sat 1/22 Start The Bus, Bristol, UK
Wed 1/26 Bakker, Copenhagen, DK
Thu 1/27 Debaser, Malmo, SE
Fri 1/28 Landet, Stockholm, SE
Sun 1/30 TBA (Contact teengirlfantasy @ gmail.com if you can help)
Tue 2/1 Indierocket, Milan, IT
Thu 2/3 Point Ephemere, Paris, FR
Fri 2/4 Pleasure, Antwerp, BE
* w/Picturplane

MP3: Teengirl Fantasy: "Portofino"

7AM is available now via True Panther

As 2010 draws to an close, Altered Zones brings you its collective year-end recap. Today, we list our favorite tracks of the year, with favorite albums due tomorrow. You can also check our list of the year's favorite music videos here, and don't forget to stay tuned through the holiday break for daily year-end mixtapes from our favorite artists.

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti: "Round and Round" [4AD]

MP3: Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti: "Round and Round"

Balam Acab: "See Birds" [Tri Angle]

MP3: Balam Acab: "See Birds (Moon)"

In a year when many artists explored the meaning of image and identity in an age of faceless, over-abundant information, Balam Acab was initially lumped in with a wave of internet-dwelling producers who put more weight on artifice and presentation than substance. "See Birds" (and the ensuing EP) quickly dusted off any scene associations, and distinguished itself by actually owning a deep-rooted, intoxicating groove. From the triplet sway and watery reverb of the beat, to the the ghostly keyboard stabs, to the feedbacking, echoing sample that drives it, "See Birds" stood out by employing dub for it's sonic palette. Its use of vocal samples as an independent instrument rather than a reference, besides resulting in one of the years most bizarrely memorable "hooks," also strips it of any sense of irony, coming off rather like a heartfelt transmission from someone who, at the moment, would really rather be left in the shadows. --Noam Klar

Baby Jazz: "Michael Jordan" [self-released]

MP3: Baby Jazz: "Michael Jordan"

Baby Jazz's very first track, "Michael Jordan" is a 12-minute megamix collaboration between Golden Chow (Samuel Cooper of Sunglasses) and Teen Wolfe (Elgin Braden of Aux Arc). The track starts with a cacophony of angular, glitchy samples and reversed female harmonies. But after 80 seconds of rising and waning sonic patterns-- usually lost the moment they are grasped-- a beat finally organizes the chaos. From there on in, Baby Jazz skips from genre to genre and sample to sample like a mini pop culture role call of feel-good cues. We hear Chris Tucker screaming on the phone in Rush Hour, some rando screaming "NOBODY TURNS DOWN DRUGS", orgasms, and the intro to Dolly Parton's "Don't Drop Out". A hilarious and joyful musical rendition of my YouTube history. --Ric Leichtung

Blondes: "You Mean So Much to Me" [Merok]

MP3: Blondes: "You Mean So Much To Me"

Along with Teengirl Fantasy, Brooklyn electronic duo Blondes pretty much led the pack this year in re-envisioning the electronic music pioneers of the 20th century as music the rock kids could get down to. “You Mean So Much To Me,” the  9-minute opener of the duo's Touched EP, sounds like something Juan Atkins, E2-E4-era Manuel Göttsching, and Cluster might come up with if they convened for a late-night bump-and-grind on an autobahn ride to nowhere. Sam Haar and Zachary whisper synth ribbons and ethereal vocal samples into a delicate cymbal patter until they unleash the eternal techno 4/4. You can read it as an invitation to dance or permission to sink deeper into your beanbag; either way, it's proof that the millennial generation is making headway on a new, glitch-free strain of intelligent dance music. --Emilie Friedlander

Dead Gaze: "Take Me Home or I Die Alone" [Fire Talk]

MP3: Dead Gaze: "Take Me Home Or I Die Alone"

Cole Furlow, aka Dead Gaze, has been churning out one fantastic jam after another this year, but few tracks anywhere have struck me the way this one does. Through the first half, Furlow sounds like he's pleading with someone. More importantly, it sounds like he really means it. As the track progresses, the song gets brighter, leaving us to believe that someone must have finally taken him home. --Jheri Evans

Games: "Planet Party" [Hippos in Tanks]

MP3: Games: "Planet Party"

It's been nine months since Games first arrived via "Planet Party." Needless to say, a lot has happened since, but the original genus for the duo's work still holds true. "Planet Party" is a diabolical excursion into midi-funk through the backdoors of our collective computer love, culling our internal memory for sampled bits and progenerated synth scapes. If there was ever a definitive sound of the past year, and counterpoint to "proto-chillwave," this was it. --Michael McGregor

Girl Unit: "Wut" [Night Slugs]

MP3: Girl Unit: "Wut"

Counting local club producers such as Mosca, Kingdom, and label founders L-Vis 1990 and Bok Bok among its ranks, the artist collective and upstart UK label Night Slugs had one of the most influential and consistent runs of releases this year, presenting an assimilated and innovative take on UK bass music. Girl Unit's "Wut" was easily its defining moment, in which the disparate elements of Southern rap, electro, grime and Baltimore club crystallized into one bold, forceful statement of intent. With its 7-minute sprawl and cyclical structure, the track oozes confident craft, coming in with a deceptively innocuous melody, before dropping a down-tempo bombshell of sub bass, air horns and pitch-shifted cries over a backing of buzzy, minor synth chords. --Noam Klar

Greatest Hits: "Danse Pop" [Olde English Spelling Bee]

MP3: Greatest Hits: "Danse Pop"

Greatest Hits lives up to their name. "Danse Pop" is a brief two minutes of sheer danceable ecstasy. The song wastes no time kicking into place and immediately has you sliding every which way across the hardwood floor. Just don't slip when it's all greased with the sweat of everyone else unable to contain this groove. --Jheri Evans

Hotel Mexico: "Its Twinkle" [Second Royal]

You can't not love the "Love Gun"-inspired riff that opens "Its Twinkle" by Japan's Hotel Mexico. But there's more to this song than that killer, 4-second, descending shredder of a hook. Layer upon layer of guitar, bass, samples, and tambourines build on that riff, as other melodic parts come in and out of focus like the phase of two droning tones. A soft falsetto emerges from the busy instrumental tapestry, changing the sonic climate with an added sense of fragility. The initial reason-- the "hot riff"-- that made you fall in love with "It's Twinkle" fades into the background. --Ric Leichtung

James Blake: "CMYK" [R&S]

MP3: James Blake: "CMYK"

A close relative of the cut-and-paste R&B hook Deadboy worked into his devastating "U Cheated," James Blake’s ubiquitous "CMYK" begins in a far more delicate fashion, before overwhelming with a 2-step wave at the drop. Starting with the notes on a synth falling like water in a fiendish Morse pattern of drops, you can’t help but be lulled into a moment of stillness before the fuzzy wall of sound hits. "CMYK" is so restless that its vocal snippets slip in and out of time, rushing around the track like echoes of its own past and future pitched forward and back before the energy of the whole collapses in on itself. --d

Nice Face: "I Want Your Damage" [Sacred Bones]

MP3: Nice Face: "I Want Your Damage"

Nice Face, the madcap bedroom project of Brooklyn’s Ian Magee, has been channeling some serious hyperactivity since he started self-releasing his first cassettes and singles back in 2008. “I Want Your Damage,” our favorite of the pint-sized psych-rock stompers that made it onto his Immer Etwas LP this year, combines the fuzzed assault of Wooden Shjips, Purrling Hiss, et al. with the off-color zaniness of the B-52s. We're psyched to hear someone actually rock out over a drum machine, and can thank Nice Face for the kind reminder that precision and lo-fi values are by no means mutually exclusive. --Emilie Friedlander

oOoOO: "NoSummr4U" [Disaro]

MP3: oOoOO: "NoSummr4U"

Though this year saw music's darker retreats illuminated by the likes of Salem, Nike7UP and Stalker, San Franciscan producer oOoOO conjured the most poignant image of C21st cultural pollution. His self-titled EP, released in autumn by Tri Angle Records, is a beguiling, obsessive collection of possessed pop poltergeists that may be veiled in an unsettling gothic sparseness, but still burn effervescent at the core with pure melodic feeling. Non-EP track "Nosummr4U" is the best gateway into the sensual shadow-world of oOoOo, though. Its disembodied lullaby hooks and super-sleazy soft-metal guitar shredding is simultaneously alienating and enrapturing. --Jack Shankly

Pure Ecstasy: "Voices" [Acephale]

MP3: Pure Ecstasy: "Voices"

In the past year I've gone from seeing Pure Ecstasy in the back parking lot of an Ethiopian restaurant on a dismal, cold night in Austin to the background music on an advertisement with a pale, stumbling Kate Moss-type. Both fit them perfectly. The understated-ness of this band must not be, well, understated. "Voices" is rife with blown-out blue notes and phantasmic guitar tones, backed by softened vocals which sometimes stretch out in love-lost angst. With its simple but steadfast lyrics, Pure Ecstasy's "Voices" reminds us that you dont have to be a TS Eliot to be affective. --Ryan Ellis

Salem: "King Night" [IAMSOUND]

MP3: Salem: "King Night"

When it hit the blogosphere last June, Salem’s “King Night” felt BIG. Huge, even. In fact, it sounded like these Chicago enfant terribles were trying to pull us out of the muddy highway ditch that their Water EP had dumped us into just a few months earlier. Setting aside the half-hearted white-boy rhymes and syrup-slow siren calls for a minute, Salem shocked us with a sample that seemed to be the electronic trio's antithesis: a heavenly, full-choir rendition of the Christmas carol “O Holy Night”, which speaks of a coming savior, and is bound to evoke the starry-eyed rapture of your elementary school Christmas pageant. Six months ahead of season, “King Night” set its source material to paper-thin beats and a bassline so blown-out it made you check to see if your speakers were broken. It was hyperbolic, a bit tacky, and almost tragically optimistic. --Emilie Friedlander

Teengirl Fantasy: "Cheaters" [True Panther]

MP3: Teengirl Fantasy: "Cheaters"

On "Cheaters", Ohio duo Teengirl Fantasy explore the more interesting peripheries of house and dance music, rather than these genres' more central, crowd-pleasing elements. As a result, the track feels like a careful distillation of all those subtle pulsations, innate rhythmic shifts, and density of sound that make the club such a good place to be. The vocal source material, culled from Love Committee's 70s R&B cut "Cheaters Never Win", appropriately swirls like some pained smoke-machine spirit through all of this anti-banger's small gaps. --Shea Bermingham

Teen Inc.: "Fountains" [self-released]

MP3: Teen Inc.: "Fountains"

Teen Inc. found something special this Spring in the super-smooth sound of fusion and funk. "Fountains" comes off super epic and endlessly groovy, a supreme trip through wobbly synthesizer, slapbass, and plaintive falsetto. Perhaps part of the reason this song has bounced around so much in my head (and in my iTunes) is because of the unfortunately small sample size of Teen Inc.'s catalog: two songs, one solitary, self-released 7" record. However, give me an LP full of this sound on a long drive any day and I guarantee you'll see a satisfied dude. Fingers crossed for something similar to this fantasy in 2011. --Ian Nelson

Tjutjuna: "Mosquito Hawk" [Fire Talk]

Ty Segall: "My Sunshine" [Goner]

MP3: Ty Segall: "My Sunshine"

I don’t think there’s a single other track that I’ve listened to more than “My Sunshine” this year. Ty takes his signature garage-pop and toughens it with a dose of classic 90’s grunge brilliance. The song tears itself apart, screams till it's hoarse, and then snaps back into place; always on the edge of self-destruction but never ceding to the crush of its own noise. It's songs like this that make me wish that the spirit of '91 was still alive on the radio waves. Were it only a few decades earlier, this one would have every kid in the country howling along in their bedrooms. --Andy French

Vacant Lots: "Confusion" [Ancient Hills Music]

MP3: The Vacant Lots: "Confusion"

The "psych" tag has been getting thrown around pretty arbitrarily recently (day-glo hypnogogia?), but in the classic sense, it could hardly apply more than it does to the Vacant Lots. "Confusion", one a handful of absolute burners from this Burlington duo, doesn't aim for any vast imaginary worlds (though it does nod to some monolithic/prog-temple vibes), instead preferring a dopesmoking hypnosis and half-disquieting/half-cozy drug-rug nostalgia borne of teenage garage jam thrills and more acquired tastes for drone and minimal guitar mesmerics. --Richard MacFarlane

WU LYF: "Heavy Pop" [self-released]

MP3: WU LYF: "Heavy Pop"

It's refreshing to hear such genuine, visceral soul on this out-of-nowhere hit from mysterious Mancunian outfit WU LYF. Such rawness and emotion tends to be absent from a lot of contemporary leftfield pop, but "Heavy Pop" stays true to its namesake, trudging through continual set-backs and triumphs, drum-rolls, guitar chimes, and gravel-throated howls. The climax comes in the form of a rambunctious, exhausted collapse; fitting of a track so emotionally invested, and as a result, so gloriously draining. --Shea Bermingham

Logan Takahashi of Teengirl Fantasy says:
Tiago Carneiro is a young Porto-based producer and DJ we played a show with last December at a venue called Piano B in his home city. We found his music on MySpace and immediately emailed him asking to send some MP3s. Tiago makes sleepy, foggy, minimal come-down jams that could be described as a somewhat moody, Enya-inspired post-dubstep. The aptly titled "Cloudy" billows in and combines a distinct sound-world of warm, floaty synth pads with a sequence of sparse, dry, strategically placed drum hits. His approach definitely has its roots in other older producers dabbling in beat-sprinkled ambience (Brock Van Wey, Dettinger, Wolfgang Voigt), but the result is slightly hookier, drawing from some past dimension of UK garage or 2step.

Check out his page for a bunch of interesting tracks. As of now, his music only exists online, but we've been psyched on this artist for the past year and think more people should have the chance to hear his stuff.

MP3: Tiago: "Cloudy"