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Music News and Interviews

World Cafe Releases 20th Anniversary Compilation

World Cafe has been broadcasting out of WXPN in Philadelphia for 20 years, and in commemoration of their two decades of bringing excellent music, World Cafe has announced plans of a compilation featuring some of the best live performances by many of the best in independent music over the years. In exchange for donations to WXPN listeners can receive Live at the World Cafe, 20th Anniversary Edition on either CD or vinyl. In addition to the compilation there will also be a weekend celebration concert from October 28-30 in Philadelphia.

The track listing is:

Disc 1

1 Vampire Weekend – “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa”
2 Beach House – “Zebra”
3 David Gray – “Babylon”
4 Fleet Foxes – “White Winter Hymnal”
5 Joseph Arthur – “Honey And The Moon”
6 Coldplay – “Shiver”
7 LCD Soundsystem – “All My Friends”
8 Brandi Carlile – “Dreams”
9 Ben Folds Five – “Brick”
10 Crash Test Dummies – “Superman Song”
11 Damien Rice – “Volcano”
12 Feist – “1234”
13 The National – “Start A War”
14 Patty Griffin – “Rain”
15 Erin McKeown – “Blackbirds”
16 Ray LaMontagne & The Pariah Dogs – “Trouble”

Disc 2

1 Dave Matthews Band – “Ants Marching”
2 Lucinda Williams – “Get Right With God”
3 Dr. Dog – “Shadow People”
4 Dawes – “When My Time Comes”
5 Adele – “Rolling In The Deep”
6 Gregg Allman – "Just Another Rider”
7 Amos Lee – “El Camino”
8 Dan Mangan – “Road Regrets”
9 Old 97’s – “Every Night Is Friday Night (Without You)”
10 The Decemberists – “This Is Why We Fight”
11 Bobby Long – “Who Have You Been Loving?”
12 Fitz & The Tantrums – “MoneyGrabber”
13 James – “Say Something”
14 Black Dub – “Surely”
15 Justin Townes Earle – “Christchurch Woman”
16 Bert Jansch – “BlackWaterSide”

For more information on the compilation or how to donate to WXPN you can visit their website here.

Categories
Festival Coverage

Get Forked

Just John and I had the pleasure of attending the sixth annual Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago’s Union Park on the weekend of July 14-16. It was hot. Really hot. The crowds came, though, and were treated to great performance after great performance. Every show I saw over the weekend was top-notch. The festival’s treatment of its fans was also top-notch. Thousands of bottles of water were passed out to the crowds to keep them hydrated (no thanks to the goons who just threw water everywhere instead of drinking it). Security were friendly throughout the entire weekend. Two air-conditioned city buses were brought in to help cool down festival-goers. What follows is a list of superlatives of some of the best, worst, and weirdest moments of the festival. Enjoy.

Best light show: The giant glowing crystals at Animal Collective

Biggest asshole: Ariel Pink, throwing another temper-tantrum and walking off stage halfway through his set

Most “f**k"s per minute: Odd Future

Highest number of gray-hairs in the crowd: Guided By Voices

Coolest stage wear: Nika Danilova of Zola Jesus’ very modern dress

Best mosh pit: No Age (which I stayed in for about five minutes too long, causing a short bout of heat sickness)

Best dance moves: Cold Cave’s Dominick Fernow, whose stomp-n-spin move was endlessly entertaining

Biggest dance party: Cut Copy, who got an entire field of thousands of people to dance

Most frequent weed clouds: Curren$y, unsurprisingly

Worst scheduling decision: Two-way tie between scheduling Odd Future and Shabazz Palaces, two of the festival’s five hip-hop acts, on at the same time and putting DJ Shadow on when the sun was still out, making his projector-using ”Shadowsphere“ completely useless (though, to the festival’s credit, they really couldn’t have put him anywhere else)

Best facial hair: Ian Williams of Battles, whose handlebar-stache perfectly matched his swanky get-up

People who should have passed out from heat stroke but, miraculously, didn’t: Yuck’s Daniel Blumberg, who wore jeans and a long-sleeve, denim button-down and Cold Cave’s Wesley Eisold and Dominick Fernow, both in black jeans, black shirts, and black leather jackets.

Categories
Music News and Interviews

Bon Iver and James Blake Collaborate on New Track

On August 17 James Blake’s Twitter (@jamesblake) sparked mentions of a collaboration between himself and Bon Iver. BBC Radio 1 had the pleasure of debuting the collaboration August 24. The song “Fall Creek Boys Choir” features the experimental electronica sense of both artists, as the vocals layer into a whirlwind of sultry electronica goodness. The vocals were performed on behalf of Bon Iver with James Blake backing the production aspect of the track. The song will be available for purchase on August 29. You can listen to the collaboration below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aqKA_2UUy4&feature=player_embedded#!

Categories
Music News and Interviews

Florence and the Machine Reveal New Album Plans

Florence and the Machine are set to release their sophomore full length November 7 in the UK. No exact date has been announced for the rest of the world, but it is expected the album it will be released later in November. The currently untitled LP is set to follow-up the massively successful debut, Lungs, which was released in 2009. Alongside of this news, Florence and the Machine have released a new song titled “What the Water Gave Me.” The soulful new song is available to listen to below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=am6rArVPip8&feature=player_embedded

Categories
DJ Highlights

Local Beat preview 8/12/11

It’s another flashback on “The Local Beat” Aug. 12 as we dive into the vault once again to uncover some great interviews from the past year. This week, however, we are not dropping too far back as we relive some interviews from the past couple of months.

The first hour will be our interview with Kelly Reid and Suzie Hook from Sound Situations, recorded in June. Sound Situations is a fantastic new local music based interview and performance TV program on the Raleigh Public Access Channel. So far the show has several new episodes under its belt. Kelly and Suzie joined me to talk about the new show and what plans they had in store for it.

At 6 p.m. we will rehash and interview with one of my favorite local bands: I Was Totally Destroying It. IWTDI came on “The Local Beat” back in April to discuss their newest album, Preludes, which was being released at the time. John and Rachel are always fantastic guests and I have yet to have a dull conversation with the duo.

The last hour was one of my all-time favorites in recent memory with The Small Ponds and Filthybird. Both bands played at Marsh Woodwinds on May 20, which turned out to be my favorite show from Spring 2011. Both groups have a lot of new material which the Small Ponds played live for us in studio.

As always “The Local Beat” starts at 5 p.m. and runs through 8 p.m. every Friday evening on WKNC. Listen live here and be sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and ReverbNation!

Categories
Weekly Charts

Top 30—WKNC’s Top Albums of the Week 8/16

Each week, the WKNC music directors tally up spins for new releases and submit their top charts to CMJ.

CMJ Top 200 from WKNC’s Daytime Indie Rock

Artist Album Label
#1 SBTRKT SBTRKT XL-Young Turks
#2 MEMORY TAPES Player Piano Carpark
#3 MOTOPONY Motopony tinyOGRE
#4 BODIES OF WATER Twist Again Thousand Tongues
#5 MIDDLE EAST I Want That You Are Always Happy Missing Piece
#6 BALKANS Balkans Double Phantom
#7 TEAM ME Team Me Propeller
#8 BRILLIANT COLORS Again And Again Slumberland
#9 BANDANA SPLITS Mr. Sam Presents The Bandana Splits
#10 SALLIE FORD AND THE SOUND OUTSIDE Dirty Radio Partisan

CMJ Loud Rock from WKNC’s Chainsaw Rock

Artist Album Label
#1 TOXIC HOLOCAUST Conjure And Command Relapse
#2 FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE Agony Nuclear Blast
#3 ANTHRAX Worship Music Sampler Megaforce
#4 SKALMOLD Baldur Napalm
#5 DIR EN GREY Dum Spiro Spero The End
#6 SVARTSOT Maledictus Eris Napalm
#7 EXHUMED All Guts, No Glory Relapse
#8 UNKIND Harhakuvat Relapse
#9 WORLD UNDER BLOOD Tactical Nuclear Blast
#10 DIRGE WITHIN “Absolution” [Single] Century Media

CMJ Hip-Hop from WKNC’s Underground

Artist Album Label
#1 MF DOOM “Gazillion Ear” [Single]
#2 CANNIBAL OX Angels & Insects
#3 JEDI MIND TRICKS Put Em In The Grave
#4 PETE ROCK & C.L. SMOOTH “I Get Physical” [Single]
#5 ACTUAL PROOF “Get It Done” [Single]
#6 BIG L “Put It On” [Single]
#7 SHABAZZ PALACES Swerve The Reeping Of All That Is Worthwhile
#8 SHANE ELI I Can Do Better
#9 SOLE AND THE SKYRIDER BAND Hello Cruel World  Fake Four
#10 MEDIAN Median’s Relief  Halftooth
Categories
Music News and Interviews

Back to School Giveaways!

With all the students moving back to campus and all the fun activities going on this week (Wolfstock and FTW!, for starters), we here at WKNC couldn’t help but get excited and have a ton of awesome giveaways for you lovely listeners.

Here’s what you should stayed tuned in for this week:

8/19: Alex Kotch, Tyler Hypnosis, Phil Cook and his Feat, H.U.S.S., Locus Recordings @ The Pinhook

8/20: Birds and Arrows, Caleb Caudel and the Bayonets, Jeff Crawford @ The Pinhook

8/20: Peter Lamb and the Wolves with Shana Tucker @ Casbah

8/20: Dntel with The One AM Radio and Geotic @ Kings

8/20: Archers of Loaf, Hammer No More the Fingers, Cobra Horse @ Cat’s Cradle

8/24: Richard Buckner and David Kilgour @ The ArtsCenter

PLUS Pictureplane’s new album, Thee Physical

Keep our requests lines on your speed dial so when the WKNC DJ asks for it, you can be a winner!

Categories
Non-Music News

EOT64 Ramadan 8/2/11

This week’s feature is on the Islam holy month of Ramadan.

Listen to episode 64.

Categories
Concert Preview

Identity Festival hits Charlotte

Live Nation’s Skullcandy Identity Festival kicked off its American tour on August 11, which has electronica lovers nationwide all hyped up.  With three stages and numerous acts,  it promises to be a rowdy dance party.  It might be overwhelming for some, but it will definitely be a great end to your summer (which ever date you make it to).

The festival is hitting North Carolina on Tuesday, August 16, and Charlotte’s Verizon Wireless Ampitheatre is  set for an amazing lineup! The quality and amount of artists booked for the show has me incredibly excited about an adventure to the Queen City. I’m most excited about Rusko, Nero, and Steve Aoki, but the rest of it will be great as well. Datsik, Chuckie, and DJ Shadow are also at the top of my to-do list.

As far as safety & fun goes:

  1. STAY HYDRATED!
  2. Take a map & event lineup
  3. Be open to new music
  4. Only take permitted items (see official site for details)
Categories
DJ Highlights

Local Beat preview 8/12/11

Friday, August 12 on “The Local Beat” is the beginning of our next Local Beat Flashback Series which we do one month a year. Throughout the rest of August we will be looking back at past episodes and dusting off some oldies from the vault.

This week we are bringing back two Local Beat Mini Exclusives from April and a live interview from back in November 2010.

Starting off the hour will be an interview we did on November 5, 2010 with members from The Light Pines. The Light Pines have been in the news recently with their free downloadable release of their debut album which came out just a short time ago. In the interview from last year we talked about that new album and the future plans of the band. It should be interesting to see how things panned out for the group between November and now.

The second hour of the show goes to a Local Beat Mini Exclusive from April with The Huguenots. The band’s bassist, York, came in to chat about the band’s debut release. However, not even two weeks after the interview with me, the band called it quits. Still, it made for an interesting conversation.

The final hour of the episode belongs to another April Mini Exclusive, this one with Adam Eckhardt of A Rooster For The Masses, who sat down with me to chat about their newest album, No One Is Ready. Adam is always a great conversationalist and it made for some fantastic discussions.

As always “The Local Beat” starts at 5 p.m. and runs through 8 p.m. every Friday evening on WKNC. Listen live here and be sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and ReverbNation!